In a fairly logical follow on from yesterday, we bolted up the strings of 60lb rail today and then proceeded to clip it all up.

It didn’t take us overly long to clip it all up, giving a very solid appearance very quickly.

We spent quite some time working on getting the curve looking nice, it will probably still need a tweak after we reinstate the gravel but it’s more than adequate for the job, and slightly less sharp than the previous turnout arrangement.

We’re very happily with how it’s come up. Keeping in mind this is relatively temporary as it’ll need significant tweaking when we replace the turnout later in the year as it’ll be a slightly different angle.

Tomorrow’s crew will be starting around 8.30am at Maldon, we’ll be jumping around onto a few jobs tomorrow to tidy up a few loose ends ahead of the end of the week long occupations.

After having so much fun destructing things last week, we were champing at the bit to do some more today.

Today’s victim was the old trolley road / oil store turnout at Maldon, it’s time was also up.

We managed to take an extremely small number of pictures of the interesting bits, however it was a real hodge podge of tierods, steel sleepers, rotten timber sleepers and some very corroded rail.

And like magic.. the concrete sleepers and replacement rails are in!

This is somewhat of a temporary job as it’ll need adjusting quite a bit when the turnout (the one the photo is being taken from) is renewed later this year.

It certainly changes the appearance of the place however, it actually has a much cleaner look – less cluttered.

These are actually from Fridays efforts, however some slightly improved gate holder openers were installed, these are really high tech, using a snap hook to connect a chain to the gate, preventing it blowing open. Given that when we arrived today the D shackles had been undone and chains unthreaded, we highly suggest if you’re not certain of how snap hooks work – please save these pictures to your phone as a future reference and or google ‘Snap Hooks’.

Tomorrow’s crew will be meeting at Maldon from 8am, where we’ll assemble the track bits and pieces laid out today.

After having so much fun destructing things last week, we were champing at the bit to do some more today.

Today’s victim was the old trolley road / oil store turnout at Maldon, it’s time was also up.

We managed to take an extremely small number of pictures of the interesting bits, however it was a real hodge podge of tierods, steel sleepers, rotten timber sleepers and some very corroded rail.

And like magic.. the concrete sleepers and replacement rails are in!

This is somewhat of a temporary job as it’ll need adjusting quite a bit when the turnout (the one the photo is being taken from) is renewed later this year.

It certainly changes the appearance of the place however, it actually has a much cleaner look – less cluttered.

These are actually from Fridays efforts, however some slightly improved gate holder openers were installed, these are really high tech, using a snap hook to connect a chain to the gate, preventing it blowing open. Given that when we arrived today the D shackles had been undone and chains unthreaded, we highly suggest if you’re not certain of how snap hooks work – please save these pictures to your phone as a future reference and or google ‘Snap Hooks’.

Tomorrow’s crew will be meeting at Maldon from 8am, where we’ll assemble the track bits and pieces laid out today.

A further little tidying up of the gravel after a drop of rain over night, saw that bit tidied up first off this morning.

It was then onto fitting in closures using replacement rail, as the removed stuff was too far gone to consider reusing.

A big clean up of all our stuff was also had, to make the area both usable and presentable for the weekend.

We’ve managed to cascade the metal biscuits we used while resleepering the Muckleford Castlemaine Section a few years ago, to fasten the 60lb rail to the concretes.

It was then lined and jacked to level, ready for the ballasting.

Once ballasting was completed a good solid tamp firmed it up nicely.

We then applied gravel to the edges to make it usable to water the steam loco, where people will need to walk.

Over in the 1/2 road turnout, a new timber was required at the toe of the points, so this was installed and brought back to gauge before fastened up.

This turnout has reached the end of its useful life, it’s served well, at 140 years old, but it is now getting beyond realistic repair. We’ve got plan to do this a full renewal later this year so we’re just doing the minimum up until then to keep it usable.

It was then given a good tidy up, check, lubricate etc… to finish off the job.

The same process was repeated on the other turnouts to keep everything in good working order.

Today’s efforts have come up looking very nice, there will be more gravel to add next week, however we’ll worry about that next week, it’ll be adequate for this weekend.

Tomorrow will be a bit of a quiet day, the workday won’t start until 10am at Maldon and will probably finish fairly early. It’ll be about getting things prepared and ready for the job next week – which involves removing the old trolley road turnout (as this is very much life expired!). If you were on the fence about coming up, tomorrow’s probably an excellent day to stay home and keep warm.