A rather busy day of sleepers today, with an exact number not known, but in the region of 1100/1200 dropped out into stacks trackside.

The drop out locations were all within 2kms of Muckleford, so we managed to get close to three full train loads out.

We’ve still got sleepers arriving by truck, as despite the vast number we’ve now got, it’s still a few thousand short of the target that we need to replace all our mainline timber sleepers.

We’ve certainly placed a massive dent in the stockpile of sleepers at Muckleford, with only a few thousand full profile sleepers left there now, mainly the stock there is low profile, which will be used in the Muckleford-Castlemaine section on an as required basis going forward. We are hoping, in addition to our ambitious plans for this year, to get a good number of these low profiles out trackside in stockpiles to free up Muckleford Yard for the hopeful delivery of Ballast!

In addition to all the excitement of dropping out sleepers, the gang found time to fix up the platform surface at Muckleford, where various small holes had begun to form, these have all been filled to provide a much nicer surface.

Tomorrow will be a similar day, however we’ll likely not get the same total number out, as we need to get quite a few up closer to Maldon, which inevitably takes a lot longer to achieve. Meeting at Maldon at 8am.

We had a very successful day today, with around 900 concrete sleepers dropped out in various locations. We’ll repeat this process again on Thursday and Friday and hopefully by then Muckleford Yard will look quite empty and we’ll be well placed to hammer and tongs resleepeeing this year.

We’re getting quite well practised at this art now! Only quite a few more thousand to go.

During the past two weeks, while Will has been on leave, the gang has focused on the rather unexciting task of fishplate changing. Over the course of 3 workdays, around 100 pair of 6 hole plates were exchanged for 4 holers. A selection of pics from across those workdays are below.

All that incredibly hard effort has now meant that from Maldon to just past Pipeline Crossing is all 4 hole plates, ready for re-sleepering in Concrete.

During the previous 2 weeks many many hundreds of sleepers have been taken off the stockpiles and distributed as needed beside the track, ready for insertions.

Thursday’s gang will meet at Maldon at 8am, then out around the Muckleford area discharging sleepers, hopefully we’ll get another 2 train loads dropped out tomorrow and at least one more on Friday, meaning we should just about get all the sleepers needed to be transported out between Maldon and Pipeline Crossing, with a large number also dropped out between Pipeline Crossing and Muckleford.

Friday’s sleeper trains saw a further 700 or so sleepers dropped out in various locations.

Today and tomorrow will see those piles distributed as required beside the track, and as such there won’t a Tuesday Workday this week (or next week).

Thursday and Friday workdays will be running as usual, with a mixture of fishplate changing just up the hill from the old tip crossing and then jumping onto bundling up the gluts once the weather gets a too unfriendly to keep changing plates.

Thursday and Friday, meeting at Maldon at 8am.

An action-packed day of collecting sleeper from the stockpiles and dropping out as needed beside the track.

We did, however, get to test a rather uninspiring, but actually amazingly effective ballast brush, developed earlier this week in the hope of reducing the backbreaking labour of removing rock from around the dogspikes.

Mark 2 will use something a bit better than a steel rope found lying in the grass, however consider we’ve cobbled it together for less than $20, we’re staggered at the result, it requires about 4 passes over the rail to get a good result, especially in the heavy rock, it managed 4 passes over each rail from Pipeline Crossing to the start of the long straight near Bendigo Road, which has probably saved us nearly 1 full weeks worth of work flicking rock away manually – definitely worth the hassle.

A follow us with the blower has left things looking very neat and tidy, with the spikes clearly exposed and the foot of the rail clearly visible, important factors for the upcoming resleepeering works.

The great plume of dust John was blowing around here did eventually settle, however, not before coating him thoroughly.

The sleeper dropping out went very smoothly. We didn’t do a count of the exact number we handled today. However, it would be nudging 1000.

The dropped out sleepers really do put the job into a nice visual perspective now, it’s an enormous number of sleepers!

We’ve made the job a little bit smaller today however, by stacking and bundling up all the gluts that had been used to stack the sleepers in the piles, we’ll collect those up at some stage and rehome them.

The main purpose of today’s activity, was to make room to unload a couple of sleeper trains tomorrow, which given the cuttings, embankments and wet ground, are a bit few and far between.

Tomorrow’s crew will meet at Maldon from 8am, our sleeper train should be leaving Maldon shortly after 8.30, all going well.