Sorry about the late notice, however tomorrow’s workday will be at Muckleford Yard, replacing a series of failing timber sleepers at the UP end of 1 road. It’s predicted to get hot, so we may well call it quits earlier than usual, however we’ve picked a job that isn’t too much trouble to walk away from if need be.

Meeting at Maldon at 8am or Muckleford Yard from 8.30am.

We did manage to make use of today’s cooler wet weather to get the ballast tidied up from last week. It has come up looking quite smart.

Not a massive number of sleepers installed today, just 13, down by Midland Hwy, however it sees the section from Rowe Street to Midland Hwy tied up safely once again, allowing the removal of a temporary speed restriction that’s been in place for several weeks.

After installing the 13 sleepers, in what seemed like almost recorded time, we had a massive tidy up of all the timber, tamped all the new sleepers, picked up any remaining steel work, ran a truck back through to Maldon and even managed a bit of tidy up around Castlemaine Depot, collecting all the unrequired rail still sitting around from our various projects over the past few years – loaded onto a wagon for a trip out to the stockpiles at Muckleford.

We’re yet to box up the ballast, however this job inevitably has the potential to make a spark, so today was not at all appropriate given the dry and heavy wind, if we get a dose of rain and everything is damp on Monday, we’ll do it then, if not we’ll bring out the firepatrol unit.

In good / great news, the big digger is now unbroken! It was all related to the solenoid that failed the other day, the exact cause is still a little unclear, likely to do with the valve the solenoid operates, however it now works and removing that solenoid and replacing it replicates the fault, so we’re now confident that’s the issue. Just one to keep an eye on for now.

Given were running ahead of schedule with the resleepeeing but we weren’t sure where we stood with the digger, next week is at this stage a little unplanned, however we do have a few odd jobs to attend to at Muckleford, please check back Monday for details.

We managed to install at least 60 sleepers today, we’ll get the actual number tomorrow. Starting at the Bell Block between Rowe and Maclise Streets, we’ve replaced all the marked sleepers right through to just past Maldon Junction. It’s not a bad effort at all.

Just the one digger on hand today, the other is still rather broken, we still managed quite a respective rate of progress, but didn’t manage to get to any of the old timber clean-up.

Very few locations actually needed the gauge adjuster, which was great, however it was still needed.

We attempted to remain as spread out as possible, however the clipping up is actually very quick, so inevitably that crew had some down time.

One main benefit of the trolley is the portable seat for the quiet moments!

The section Maclise Street to Maldon Junction didn’t receive as many sleepers, however we’ve put the focus heavily on the curves and vulnerable locations, such that we’re almost at the point of being gauge proof in this section now.

Tomorrow’s gang, weather permitting, will see another 15ish sleepers installed down by Midland Hwy Crossing, in the bit we didn’t quite get to the other day when out in that area, we’ll also go through and give the lot a tamp, tidy up and ballast regulate to tidy everything up.

Meeting Castlemaine Depot at 8am or out by Midland Hwy Crossing from 8.30am.

Thursday (tomorrow), we’ll be installing additional sleepers between Rowe St. And Maclise St crossings. Meeting at Castlemaine Depot at 8am, then out by Rowe Street from 8.15am.

Tuesday’s report:

We had quite a successful day on Tuesday, with 61 concrete sleepers installed between Rowe and Maclise Streets. We had both diggers in action, 1 pulling sleepers, and 1 inserting, which worked very well.

The impressive quality of the timber removed can be seen, unfortunately they’re all aging, we’ve replaced the worst of the worst and ensure any patches / clusters have a concrete in the middle to hold gauge, as yet gauge hadn’t begun to widen around here, but it was only a matter of time.

We’re yet to tamp up, however, we have collected all the old timber and stacked it out of the way for disposal, making the job look a bit tidier.

We found a nice tree for smoko, which came with its own lounge chair! Needless to say, it was put to good use! Thank you, whoever decided that tree needed a comfy chair!

Now the reason for the delay in this update, once packed up on Tuesday, the big digger headed home to Maldon, only making it as far as Donkey Farm Track, before losing all power to the transmission, a blown fuse was found and a cooked solenoid, however even with them replaced, she still wouldn’t move!

So we had to clear it from the track, as the location it failed was not even slightly suitable to attempting to walk it off.

So the tipper to the rescue, we’ve got a system of a solid draw bar for emergency towing on board all our big machines and until Tuesday, we’ve never needed them, however as per all the trials, it worked perfectly. The brakes on the digger still worked normally, just no drive, so the truck provided the go power and cradle for the implements, and a nice slow trip back to Maldon saw everything returned home safely.

We spent a good few hours going over it today, we’re not quite back in action yet. Hopefully, it’s a relatively easy fix once we find the problem. Unfortunately, this is once again an attack of the aging machinery.

On a positive note, the telehandler’s back functioning correctly, a series of dirty electrical connections kept giving us intermittent travel faults, which we’ve finally been able to replicate and now eliminate, it took a long time, but we can now just about draw up a wiring diagram for that beast from memory!