We successfully managed to paint over all the graffiti along the carriage shed and workshop at Castlemaine today, however due to a digger break down and some complications with the Vline occupation, not much else was achieved.
Tomorrow has been declared a total fire ban, which will curtail our plans somewhat, it’ll also be hot and horrid which will certainly not lead to high productivity. We only have a few odd jobs that need to be attended to, these being the running of trucks from Castlemaine back to Maldon and the like, as such if you’re travelling any distance, please stay home, as we’re very like to finish early. Otherwise for anyone local, meeting at Maldon at 8am.
Well, today saw us achieve not a great deal, although it seemed to take all day to reach that unimpressive goal! We have managed to help the Mechanical Department get the superheater header back into the J class, which put them in a better position to start re-assembling the loco.
We did break the digger, no idea how or why but the rails wheels wouldn’t lower… pulled apart the checks valves associated with the cylinders, no issues were found but upon reassembly it all worked, so we guess that’s a bonus.
Tomorrow’s workday is all about getting prepared for the coming few weeks of works. We’ll meet at Maldon at 8am, loading various things onto trucks etc.. to move around as required. We’ve also got a few hours work to finish off the Turnout at Maldon.
Wednesday we’ll be meeting at Castlemaine Depot at 8am, where the main focuses will be painting out Graffiti and lineside vegetation control out to Rowe St.
Thursday is our backup day to finish what we don’t on Wednesday, hopefully we’ll move onto tightening bolts in the Castlemaine to Rowe St. Section.
Friday, is bridge work preparation, which all being well should be a case of Meeting at Maldon at 8am, however that could change considerably. So check back closer!
It’s pretty much complete now! Only a couple of hours work on Tuesday should see the final ballasting and very last tidy up completed.
With the ballast on and tamped, it certainly came up looking quite smart
It’s even got spreader bars and a point lever fitted, all tested and working correctly!
It’s been a long drawout job, initially we didn’t install it as we needed a train free week, or at least have 2 locos available to push/pull a train without running around at Maldon, which hasnt coincided with our availability.
Next week will be a slightly different one, as we’re going to make use of a Vline shutdown to do graffiti removal works and clearing of foul foliage between Castlemaine and Rowe Street, that’ll occur on Wednesday and Thursday next week, so anyone interested in moving their day to Wednesday would be most welcome.
The turnout job has come along extremely well today, it would have been even better except for a digger hose blowout this afternoon… getting the right fitting used up the afternoon, however we’ll be right to go tomorrow.
We’ve used a mix of dogs and screws, based very heavily of what we removed previously and what didn’t need lugging too far to re-use, however we’ve kept them localised to areas to make it easier in the future.
It didn’t take very long at all to get the last of it all fastened up, which was good.
At which point we setup the laser again and set about lifting the straight leg to the correct height, before we covered everything in ballast.
Needless to say that the laser does do a better job than the one eyed kneeling over squint thing, as we managed to get it looking very nice.
It was only at this point we poured enough ballast around to allow this to be tamped, this saved an enormous amount of effort.
It came up very nicely, we’ve even lifted the other side of the turnout to level, ready to apply ballast. It was at this point things broke, however it’ll be an easy first up thing tomorrow, adding more rock and squeezing.
During the down time, the last of the fastenings were removed from the timbers, all were marked for length for potential re-use, tomorrow we’ll stack these up out of the way.
Tomorrow should be quite an easy day, with just ballasting, tamping , fitting of the spreader bars and point lever to go. Meeting at Maldon from 8am
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