Another very successful day today, with the remaining 1 in 2 from yesterday inserted and clipped up well before morning tea.

We then went back and did the infill in the ramp with low profiles, as we can’t lift by the gang shed and turnout approach too much, so the lower sleepers are more suited.

Once that was comfortably behind us, as set the goal of completing the curve this week, a job which seems very likely.

By day’s end we’d inserted and clipped up the 1 in 4 for the whole curve and slightly beyond, we’ve unfastened all the timber and collected the jewellery, ready for a flying start inserting the infill tomorrow morning!

And the random picture of the day is of this little guy, who seemed to be claiming the track as his own and wasn’t in any hurry to move off without a bit of assistance.

Tomorrow’s gang will meet at Maldon at 8am, then out on site slightly thereafter.

After a short hiatus, it’s nice to be back into resleepeeing!

Nothing too new and exciting. However, we did very well on our first day back into it, getting approximately 80 sleepers inserted and clipped up, which puts on us our usual average. And like clockwork the next delivery of pandrol items turned up almost the exact second we needed them to (we had a bag left and that got us started).

This round, we’re starting at Maldon and heading as far as we can towards Curve 20 by the end of June, when we hand back our week long track occupations, we’re very hopeful of getting to at least the tip road, but we should get considerably further, all being well of course.

Tomorrow’s crew will be starting at Maldon at 9am! Later than usual, then out on site about 2 minutes later.

From tomorrow, 8am at Maldon, we’ll be back into sleepers! We’ll begin just outside Maldon Yard and keep heading towards Pipeline Crossing until we join up the gap.

However, to finish off last week’s excitement,  we completed the track inspection around Castlemaine Yard, which showed that the platform road is due for another round of sleepers, otherwise it was quite pleasing. We’ll be getting onto that once we’ve handed back our week long occupations after the end of June.

We spent most of Friday, when not track inspecting, improving the surface of the loco shed for the imminent arrival of the Steam Engine! While the steam loco is back in action, it’s currently living in the workshop, while the last of the setup is being done over in the loco shed.

We’ve tried to keep the costs down as much as possible, as we’re still very hopeful of a concrete floor in the not too distant future here. We’ve used gravelly earthy fill to make up the bulk of the height and rolled in fouled ballast to make the walkways, once all that’s settled a layer of nice fine rock will probably arrive to really give it a nice finish, anyhow in the meantime, every time you’re inside the shed, do a few extra laps of the walkways to help compact it!

We also rolled in some of that fouled ballast to the roadway to help with any soft spots, which seems to have worked very nicely. We’ve also filled that area between the 2 left roads, to give a much safer working space during loco preparation.

We look forward to seeing you again tomorrow from 8am at Maldon (or just slightly out of Maldon Yard thereafter).

Today was the start of the detailed track inspection, a six monthly ritual, and quite well practised now.

We began by checking the settings of the rolling track gauge against our master reference and then headed off!

It was a glorious morning, with a few minor tight gauge faults found just outside Maldon Yard, however the magnitude of which was sufficiently small to be permitted in the track for 1 month, and given we plan on beginning resleepeeing there next week… we can rest pretty easy with that one.

We had a few bolts to tighten, but only one needed replacing, in fact we must have just about replaced all the old type bolts in the track now, hence why we had so few that needed our attention at this inspection.

We seemed to set a bit of a record today, the rolling gauge is quite quick, however normally that crew identify a large number of small faults for the follow up crew to fix, however the number of faults was so much lower than previous times it resulted in the follow up crew keeping up with the checkers.

The detailed notes that are taken for each section of the track are done along with the follow up crew, so as to record all faults and the action taken. This does involve a lot of sitting down to take notes, so as to ensure they’re all legible back in the office.

We had a ripper morning tea spot, down on Donkey Farm Track, it’s still a very quiet bush road and a very nice quiet place for a cuppa.

We managed to get the whole mainline, except Castlemaine Yard, walked and checked with the rolling gauge today, about 4kms better than we usually do, which was excellent. 

We’ve got a few faults to fix, nothing of great interest or excitement, but it did reaffirm how quickly the timber sleepers are failing, but that’s not a surprise and if we can keep up our great rates of progress 99% of our major concerns will enter the history books, within the next few years.

We will focus heavily on Castlemaine Yard tomorrow as it will be the first Yard that we know needs work, so we’ll mark it up ready for that work while we’re there. Hopefully we’ll also get out to Muckleford to do a full turnout and siding check there, Maldon Yard may be a little ambitious for tomorrow but we’ll see.

Tomorrow’s gang meeting at Castlemaine Depot at 8.30am