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!

Tomorrow, we’ll be meeting at Castlemaine Depot from around 8.15am, then out by Rowe St. Level Crossing from 8.45am, replacing sleepers.

Another big day of sleeper dropouts, only 898 sleepers were dropped out today, still lots, but not quite as impressive as yesterday’s 1,337.

The main focus was again in the region of pipeline crossing, this time on the Down Side or as depicted here, being dropped out for use on the Down side of the crossing. There isn’t an enormous number of locations to unload along this section, being either on embankments or in cuttings, so we’ve had to unload heavily at a few select sites.

The equivalent to another train load of sleepers were loaded at Muckleford, and it is starting to show a notable dint in the stockpile there.

We’ve decided to be more effective at this, it’s time to drag the other two flat wagons back in as sleeper carriers, taking the full train up to 6 wagons, and allow around 600 per train rather than the current 450, keeping just inside the load limit for a Y class. The extra wagons, QN ballast types, haven’t seen much use for a few years, so before we press them into heavy service they’ll be given exams at Castlemaine – but it would be rude if they just got a free ride to Castlemaine, hence they were put to work on their delivery to the workshops.

The afternoon saw us mix things up a little, with 264 low profile sleepers taken through to Maclise Street Crossing, for spot replacement between Rowe St and Midland Hwy crossings over the next 2 weeks (while the extra wagons are being prepared for the next sleeper trains).

Next week, we’ll try to get at least 150 inserted between Rowe St and Midland Hwy, provided the weather is reasonably kind we should do fairly well, check back Monday for details of Tuesday, however all being well, meeting by Rowe Street Crossing at 8am.

We managed to set a record today, for the greatest number of sleepers we’ve moved by train in 1 day! A total of 1,337 sleepers have been dropped out trackside, with a further 450 loaded and ready to go in the morning.

First off we unloaded a full train load of fast clip sleepers out by Pipeline Crossing, these will be used in the straight and very large curve nearby.

Then off to Muckleford for a full reload, this time e clip type sleepers, for use in the curves on the Down side of pipeline crossing.

They were dropped out well ahead of lunch, in time to return to Maldon and unload the next semi load of sleepers arriving.

Cross loaded from the truck straight onto the train, nice to not have any double handling.

Once they were loaded, all remaining fastclip sleepers at Maldon were loaded, happening by fluke to perfectly match the number needed to make a full train load!

Another discharge well on the Down side of Pipeline crossing further around the sweeping curve saw the wagons emptied again, ready for the final load of the day at Muckleford.

Tomorrow we’ll be meeting at Maldon at 8am, we do need to fuel up the digger and do a couple of small odd jobs, before we head out to drop out the loaded sleepers. However by the end of tomorrow, we should have another few hundred sleepers dropped out, all helping to work towards getting them into the track.