A bit of an odd jobs day tomorrow, we’ll be meeting at Maldon at 8am and if all goes to plan we should end up at Castlemaine sometime during the day, however it depends exactly how successful we are on the way.

There will be very little on tomorrow, the last workday for this week, we’ll be meeting at Maldon at 8am and probably finishing a bit early. We’ve got a few odd jobs and loose ends to tie up before having the rest of this week off.

It didn’t take too long this morning to tidy up the mess and mark up the next 160 to be changed. It’s come up very nicely and seems to be a significant distance towards getting this straight complete.

Once that was all behind us, it was down to Castlemaine to begin some turntable maintenance.

It was due one of it’s regular bolt tightening and fettles. The rails had wandered on the table just a little one end, however they had moved the end timbers a little – it was easily put right by loosening the fishplates and wedging the timber and rails back to their correct locations. It’s a bit of a design flaw with these things, there is very little to brace the timberwork to the steelwork and after a bit of shrinkage things can move – however it’s also much better to correct a bit of timberwork that’s moved than have that stress on the old steelwork, as it’s likely to be far less forgiving. Ultimately a few hours work ever few years is a pretty small trade-off.

It was also a good opportunity to give it a mow, much tidier now.

On the whole, it was a bit of an odd job week. However, it was quite successful.

Next week will be a bit quieter, with only Tuesday being a workday, there will be no work on Thursday or Friday. Tuesday’s crew meeting at Maldon at 8am.

We’re getting there, only about 770 left to install now to remove all the timber sleepers between Maldon and Pipeline Crossing.

Today’s effort saw 120 sleepers installed, all clipped up. This is a very good effort for our relatively small crew, our typical daily average is 80, so 120 is not to be scoffed at. 

Given our limited number, we didn’t both using the trolley, which had the tradeoff of moving things a little more manually, or mechanically in this case.

However we’ve got the system pretty down pat now, there was a bit of relearning as it’s been a few weeks, however we got there and it bodes well for finishing this stetch before the really hot weather arrives.

We spent a long time attempting to line, however it really does need a tamper to do that job justice, however it’s a lot smoother now than it was previously.

There is always a few stubborn ones, however by day’s end we’d beaten all of them into submission!

The end result is quite respectable. We still need to jack and pack tomorrow as well as tidy up the site. However, that should be quite achievable.

Tomorrow’s crew meeting at Maldon at 8am or out on site from 8.15am (we’re now well up the hill from the tip crossing).