We didn’t have our resident Thursday photograph on hand to catch all the excitement today, however we did remember to take a few. The first shot was about morning tea, by which time the old was out and most of the new was in!

In what seemed like no time, we had rails in, cut to length, bolted in and clipped up!

Post lunch was the ever exciting job of lifting to level, ballasting and tamping.

We’ve given the ballast a very thorough tamp, lots of vibration from the tamper, and hopefully, it’ll stay where it’s meant to. The old ground below was brilliantly compact and hard and evidently very well draining.

It wasn’t long before we were adding gravel and rolling it in, we though the truck would be a good weight, however the digger appears to have a much heavier footprint. It’ll settle a little so we’ve got a bit extra on hand to top it up when it does.

We spent the afternoon focusing on the crossing itself, meaning we still have the approaches to get to the correct height and tamp, which should be relatively straight forward. We’ve got one little kink to pull out too, we had it perfect, but it moved during lifting, thankfully it’s in a easy location.

A massive thankyou to Mount Alexander Shire Council for their assistance with the road closure and gravel, we couldn’t do it without them.

In very unfortunate news, we had some very serious damage done to the yellow truck upon return to Maldon.

We returned to find an individual helping himself to some of our stores of items (using tools he’d bought himself to unbolt items that he believes are rightfully his), and he didn’t take too kindly to being told to return the items and retaliated by damaging our truck.

2 broken mirrors, a smashed windscreen and a broken indicator. Undertaken with a shifter, many threats were also made to our staff, upon our request for him to return the item he stole.

The police are involved, however the individual did leave the site against the direction of police, with the items he intended to take.

He is a most unwelcome visitor to the railway, with previous negative interactions.

If anyone sees this vehicle, registration 1SG 9HW at any location around our railway or others, please contact the police and indicate he has a history of stealing railway items. His first name is believed to be Jack, and he is probably known to a few railway groups.

Unfortunately, his behaviour today was highly inappropriate, and he is certainly not doing the railway preservation movement any favours. The vehicle and individual are pictured below. We also have some great video footage of him smashing the window and throwing punches! But we’ll leave that with the police until charges are laid.

It has soured what should have been a very pleasant and successful day.

Hopefully, tomorrow is less eventful! We’ve still got a bit to do, and we’ll be meeting down at Woodlocks Lane from around 8/8.15am.

Apologies for the lack of blog yesterday. However, we have a little more to share today.

Tuesday began by lining the track on the up side of the crossing, it’s been at bit odd for some time and was the perfect excuse to correct it.

We replaced an additional 10 sleepers either side of the crossing, to reduce the total amount needing attention during the crossing works.

However as we still had Wednesday’s (today’s) trains to content with, it had to be trafficable.

The result was a noticeable dip through the crossing, but it was still quite within scope to permit normal train running.

And just to prove it, we were on hand for today’s last movement through the old crossing.

Once the train was clear and we’d received the track back, we began preliminary destruction!

The approaches have been lifted and where possible the old fouled ballast scraped aside, we’ve also reprofiled the surrounds to ensure drainage.

As expected the road bed is good, tidy and rick solid, so we won’t be disturbing that any more than we have to now.

Tomorrow’s road closure starts at 7am, and we’ll be on site around the same time, ready to pull apart the crossing and begin digging to depth. Join us tomorrow to see how it’s done!

We decided to be ambitious today and installed an additional 40 concretes, taking this week’s total up to 160. Which keeps us on par with our usual 80 per day average.

It’s not a massive dint on this straight. However, on top of the already completed length, it’s certainly now a significant amount.

We managed to install the 20 from yesterday, the additional 40, sort, bundle and strap all the timber sleepers, tidy up any left overs, jack and pack the dips as well as pack all the tools away before the rains arrived around 3pm. We’re pretty happy with our efforts.

All being well we’ll be back here in a fortnight, next week we’ll be rebuilding the Woodlocks Lane level crossing.

It turns out that we haven’t lost our touch, we very comfortably installed 100 concrete sleepers today, on the up side of the old tip crossing.

The day didn’t begin well, with the digger throwing a tantrum as a result of it raining, however once we drained the water from the lead going to the effected solenoid, it all went like a charm.

It was noting revolutionary or exciting, however it 100 less that need replacing now.

The top of the hill still seems a fair way off, however it’s certainly seeming like a smaller gap to fill now!

In other good news, we’ve been working with the local council and we’ve managed to lock in 2 level crossing renewals in the immediate future.

Woodlocks Lane will be next Thursday and Friday, details will be posted  next week.

Sawmill Road will be on Thursday 12th and Friday 13th September. This will be a big milestone, marking the end of the re-railing project!

Tomorrow’s crew will be continuing on with sleepers, we’ve still got 20 to install to complete the current job, all going well we might be able to attempt a further 40 sleepers before we begin the task of tidying up the old timber etc… meeting out on site (old tip xing) from 8am.