Today we had a good crack at installing full depth concrete sleepers into the track, the chosen location was the old tip crossing near Maldon.

It was all undertaken by lifting the rail 150mm to match the increase in height of the concrete sleepers, that way, we’re not digging into the roadbed.

It didn’t take us long at all to get the hang of things, we’ve learnt a lot and no doubt will learn a lot more in time!

At the end of the rather leisurely and very much experimental day, we had installed 48 concrete sleepers, fixed suffiently good ramps at either end (to get to the concrete sleeper height) and given the section a bit of a jack and pack as requires to make it good enough for trains to use – it needs ballast to do much more with now.

Anyone with a keen eye will note that we’re very short on ballast now. Once we’ve completed any significant length of this, we’ll be chasing ballast very desperately, however at this stage the critical element is replacing the rapidly failing timber sleepers, to ensure we keep running trains into the future, we can keep the speed of trains down as required if the concrete sleepered track is a bit rough and lacking ballast, however we can’t safely run trains if the timber sleepers deteriorate much more.

Tomorrow will be in the same vein, however focusing on getting some of the massive stockpiles of sleepers at Maldon out to site. Meeting at Maldon from 8am, we’ll be jumping between Maldon Yard and Bendigo Road most of the day

We had a very successful day today, with a significant number of dips and minor geometry issues removed between Brown St and Boundary Track, we also finally completed tamping near Brown street while in the area. The last of ballast has been boxed up and the whole section is looking very smart. Over the next week or so, once it’s had a few trains over it settle the ballast, we’ll raise the speed limit in this section back up to 25mph, just as it used to be.

We’re hopeful on Thursday, of having a bit of a go at installing some full depth concrete sleepers near Maldon, it’ll be a trial day or two, learning what works and what doesn’t. We’ll meet at Maldon at 8am and work out the exact plan of attack then, however we’ll probably attack the area near the old tip crossing first.

This morning involved an excursion to Daylesford and back to collect/drop off a few items.

However upon returning to Maldon, the lack of formal workday was made use of to build this truly hideous looking thing.

It’s a ballast scrapper, set to the exact height of a full depth concrete sleeper. The idea being well lift the rail 150mm, remove the old sleepers and use this to sit on the rail head and allow a level ballast/gravel base to be made for the concrete sleepers going in. The extra large cut outs are to clear fishplates.

It is most certainly the most ugly, probably the most flimsy and unbeautiful one of its kind, however for a mark 1 trial, it’ll do the job. We haven’t got an area quite ready to test it properly, however it certainly seemed to do its intended purpose when poked between a couple of timber sleepers in the river gravel section, time will tell, hopefully the week after next we might get to have a little try of this.

Next week should be back to situation normal, with Tuesday’s workday, fingers crossed, back to tamping near Brown Street and dip removal up by Boundary Trk. The plan will be to meet at Boundary Track at 8.30am.

A very successful day today with an enormous amount of sorting of the Muckleford Mess! It looks much tidier and will be much more manageable going forward.

We even got to properly test out our new diesel tank with it’s fancy automotive nozzle. It makes fuelling all our vehicles much easier!!

Unfortunately, there won’t be a formal workday tomorrow, as we do need to do a few catch up jobs off site following all the recent failures (which for now are holding together!) Things should be back to normal next week, as we’re getting on top of all these extra jobs now.