Well, after a clean up and repaint up at the workshops, the north end water column has been stood up again.

The slight irony being we needed to bring in water to give it a wash following the standing, as we did get it a bit dirty.

The columns here are purely ornamental, if we become extremely flush with cash, we may one day install the plumbing, however there’s a few things to tick off the jobs list first.

Today’s gang decided to enter in a very mobster like fashion, giving an almost intimidating feel….. thankfully, the intimidating wasn’t overly long lived.

The main task of the day, although it have seem like a bit more of a side quest, was to inspect the track around Castlemaine Yard, which returned some extremely favourable results, the best results we’ve ever had here – which is good given the effort we’ve put into it in recent times.

We did get a surprise upon discovering this little brown snake having a nice sun bake beside the platform at Castlemaine, thankfully no aggressive was shown by any party and after confirming our bunch were of no interest to it, the snake slithered away.

The south end column, although we forget to get a picture… has been lowered and transported up to the workshop for the same treatment. Having these painted will lift the appearance of the area greatly and we look forward to when the whole place looks spick and span.

Thursday’s crew will begin track walking duties from Maldon, starting there at 8am before trudging off in search of faults.

Unfortunately today’s works didn’t go exactly to plan, so we’ll be needed at Castlemaine for a few hours at least tomorrow morning, meeting at Castlemaine from 8.15am, please park in the car park as a large truck is expected.

A jack, pack and tidy up of yesterday’s work left it looking very smart, unfortunately it really shows up how rough the remaining timber section is now, not too long to go now and this section should be complete.

We spent a good portion of the day ballasting and tamping the new turnout in Maldon, which has come up looking an absolute treat.

The afternoon was spent transferring some machinery down to Castlemaine in readiness for a few jobs there early next week.

All going well, we’ll be onto track inspection tasks on Tuesday, most likely starting at Castlemaine, however time will tell, check back Monday night to confirm.

An excellent day was had today, with an additional 149 concrete sleepers installed into Tangent 20-21.

Tuesday’s crew did do the preparation of unspiking 1 in 4, removing anchors etc… however the bulk of the work occurred today and at a great pace.

We have learnt the process is much quicker if the area that was ramped previously has all the spikes removed, as these don’t have much room below the sleepers for knocking off.

It was all pretty regular and normal, nothing new or exciting, however it did seem to flow very well.

A quick spray with soluble oil really does make all the difference.

By close of play today, it was all clipped up, lined and looking very smart.

It may seem a bit hard to tell from the pics. However, before it was a very rough, tired, and in all honesty pretty poor section of track, while the resleepered bit looks leaps and bounds better and has an amazingly better line and top, even without us running through with the jacks yet.

Tomorrow’s crew will meet at Maldon at 7.45am, then out to site to jack, pack and tidy up, before we head into Maldon to Ballast the new turnout!