We were pretty quick off the mark this morning, trying to make sure we beat the rain. First job involved a quick line, which actually came up quite nicely.

Then we were into it, head down and full speed into inserting and clipping up sleepers. We managed to knock over the 90 odd sleepers before morning tea.

And it did come up looking really very nice.

It was then time to scrape up what ballast their was, ready for a bit of a jack and tamp, which resulted in us getting quite a nice approach to the crossing.

This spider has taken up residence around the level crossing, often producing very elaborate webs in one night.

While all this was going on, the big digger was gainfully employed, moving the excess sleepers around to the straight between Woodlocks Ln and Maldon Yard.

When we dropped these sleepers here we used it as a bit of a dumping ground, just to get them out of Maldon Yard, anyhow there was almost enough excess either side of the crossing to complete the straight down to Woodlocks Ln, we might need to get another trolley load or two from Pipeline Crossing, which we’ll likely do tomorrow.

Where we’ve finished on the UP side of Bendigo Road is where we’ll jump back to the E clip and Fastclip mix, as they were largely already dropped out, however a bit of preparation in completing that task was undertaken prior to the rain setting in, which it did quite impressively from around 2pm.

These pics weren’t really of today’s work, however they show what we achieved earlier in the week, from a slightly elevated view from the digger showing the curve in the Down Direction and the Crossing in the UP Direction, now that it’s all tidied up.

It’s something we’re certainly very proud of.

Tomorrow’s crew will meet on site (Bendigo Road) from around 8am. We’ll begin by bundling timber sleepers and hopefully all going well between rain showers, we’ll complete the preparations for the next few bits.

We managed a very impressive 90 odd sleepers just past Bendigo Road Crossing.

That got us to a 1 in 2 pattern all clipped up.

This, by coincidence, marks the half way spot between the crossing and section of concrete we inserted last year, just down the way.

This week should comfortably see all the additional sleepers in and clipped up, hopefully all the timber bundled and back up at Maldon and any last tamping needed to make this strip quite usable.

The rain is looking to be arriving later in the day tomorrow, so we’ll still be working as usual, 8am at Maldon or just after on site, hopefully the bulk of it will be out of the way by lunch time.

Another very successful day today, the big digger did some substitution early on, but we had the little one back in action in no time. A replacement hose was all we needed.

It seemed to go like clockwork, installing the remainder of the sleepers.

Once it’d had a good line and a tidy up lift and tamp, it is now quite acceptable, certainly no worse than it was previously anyhow. It still could do with further tweaking, however we can attend to that once we’ve handed the week long occupations back as it’ll make little to no difference in the short term, other than appearance.

Tomorrow’s crew will begin on the other side of Bendigo Road Crossing, meeting on site from 8am. Thursday’s weather is looking wet, so we might not be aiming too high tomorrow incase we get rained out.

Quite a successful day today, until the little digger blew a hose, but thankfully we’d well and truly broken the back of the job by then.

We had a very light difference to contend with today, a section of timber sleepers with pandrol adaptors. These a little more labour intensive to unclip than standard spikes.

It was all pretty regulation stuff otherwise however.

We did change the way we handled the adapter type sleepers, leaving 1 in 4 fastened up, unlike the usual 3 in 4 spiked up, as with the clips they can’t just be knocked off.

We almost completed the insertions 1 in 2 and clipped up. The digger died with only about 5 to go. We should knock that over easily tomorrow once we’ve got the new hose.

It’s looking a bit rough and ready currently, it’ll improve greatly once we’ve done a lining pass tomorrow, inserted the intermediates and then tamped up the approaches.

Tomorrow’s crew meeting Maldon 8am or on site shortly after.