We had a very successful day on Tuesday, where we installed 50 posts to make up the great fence of Muckleford.

It certainly sends a very clear message, without being too offensive to the aesthetics that driving in that area is not permitted.

50 posts were a lot of posts to install! However, they’re in very deep, solidly and should cause suitable resistance to anyone trying to barge through.

We also spent a lot of time cleaning up accumulated mess, including removing the old compound that hadn’t seen any real use for decades, so we’ve pulled it down to in effort to have a big tidy up there tomorrow, moving all our valuable items into a much more secure area, bunded by walls of concrete sleepers!

Tomorrow’s workday will be at Muckleford, focussing on lots of various tidying up and sorting activities. Meeting at Maldon at 8am or on site (Muckleford Yard) from 8.30am.

Tomorrow we’ll be working in Muckleford Yard, meeting there from 8.30am, however we do have a few vehicles that need to be driven down from Maldon, any willing victims, we’ll be leaving there at 8am.

The little magic box, which controls the revs on the big digger… it seems to be fine. However, the electrical supply to it isn’t.

Lots of exciting time spent testing and checking, confirmed the issue is somewhere between the brains of the digger and that box! Where it should have a voltage range of around 20v, it’s only got a range of 3v… which isn’t enough to make the little DC motor kick into life and rev up the engine! It’s a poor connection somewhere along that long path, which goes from the CPU up into the cab, then back out to the CPU and into the control box, thankfully there’s only about 10 connections along that path to check, all in spectacularly awkward locations! It’ll just take another few hours tomorrow, and hopefully we’ll have it.

The telehander issue was quite similar, however much more easily fixed, drilling a hole to allow accumulated water to get out and replacing the fuses has done the trick, unfortunately the fuse holders aren’t in the best of health, so we’ll order another couple and replace them too, however we are fairly confident that’s the source of our troubles.

In unrelated matters, we’ve had a very frustrating experience over the past week at Muckleford. We, along with the local CFA and several properties, have been the victims of vandalism and theft.

We’ve had around 10t of scrap steel sleepers plates and some other very minor scrap items stolen, along with vandalism to both station building, goods shed and signal wire.

The main items stolen are these sleeper plates, the 3 types, they’re very unique and unlikely to have come from elsewhere, if you come across them on marketplace, gumtree or at the pub, please let the police know and indicate it’s related to the thefts at Muckleford Railway Station.

It’s very much the focus of an ongoing police investigation, however it has the potential to be extremely helpful if anyone was to photograph anything that could be deemed suspicious activity around the Muckleford station area, particularly that involving a truck. The truck in question has around a 5.4m wheelbase, with dual wheels at the rear and likely having a crane. However, we’re aware that at least one 4wd has been involved also. All incidents appear to have occurred in the early hours of the morning (over multiple days).

We’re in the process of getting cameras installed, however that’ll still take a few days and in the meantime, we’re trying to make the site very inaccessible, however that is hard with our equipment out of action!

One of today’s tasks involved repairing the signal wire where the track had been driven over at Muckleford, breaking the wire.

We’ve come up with a solution to prevent this, with a rail fence, consisting of 50 rails spaced at 1.5m intervals at the location where access can be gained over the track to prevent this reoccurring, we used a contractor to bore the holes today and we’ll stand the rails ASAP. This has been an issue off and on for several years. A solution was needed. Interestingly, the latest theives have not cut the chains on the gates. Rather, they’ve chosen the hardest way to gain access.

Our good mates, who not only stole from us, the local fire brigade and many others, have decided that that wasn’t enough of a thrill, they’ve also attempted to take their truck over the timber bridge at Muckleford, all in the dead of night. Thankfully for us, they did chicken out of crossing the bridge and didn’t damage it in any way, however they have vandalised the bike track somewhat cutting chains and padlocks as an alternative route (quite bizarre given a perfectly good access track is on the other side of the line – we don’t think intelligence is a trait of these people!).

Their behaviour is appalling, and we’re trying to do what we can to stop it. We could really use all the eyes and ears of the district to help put a stop to it.

As the situation continues we’ll keep you posted, in the mean time, if you see anything suspicious, it probably is. If you’re not certain or comfortable going to the police, then please contact Will.

Tomorrow, like today, won’t be a formal workday, we’ll try to do what we can to get the big digger up and running and barricade Muckleford Yard. Meeting at Maldon at 8am for anyone who would still like to help out.

Unfortunately, there are no pictures today, just grumbles.

If the torrential rain wasn’t bad enough, we managed to get all three of our main items of equipment to fail!

The little digger, after another small setback with the tamper early on, it did a few hundred metres before failing in a whole new and exciting way, not catastrophically so but it has damaged a few hydraulic fittings on both the head and the excavator.

The big digger decided today was the day that the little magic box that controls the engine speed would give up the ghost. Thankfully some very classy bush mechanical work with sticks and old rope meant we could jam in on high enough revs to unload a truck and get it back to Maldon so we can pull it apart… again. It’ll no doubt be a 30 second fix, once we’ve done the 5 hours of removing covers and fittings to access the box!

The telehander, showed no interest in doing anything that resembled moving today, which was an issue for unloading a truckload of concrete sleepers, hence the need to get the big digger at least a bit usable in a hurry. This is obviously an electrical issue, it’s very much a wet weather fault and by its nature very hard to successfully diagnose and fix while the rain is pelting down.

The frustration thing with all these faults, and pretty much everything we’ve had lately is related to things wearing out and failing due to age. We’ve not yet had a single failure that could have been reasonably forseen as a maintenance issue, which is nice, however it is a real reflection on just how much work all our gear actually has done. It’s also becoming apparent, now that all the gear is well over 10 years old (telehander and big digger are 20 years old), that not having undercover storage is a fair factor here too, we’re noticing a lot of the components, particularly under the covers where water just cant dry out when they have to live outside, are showing fair signs of being weather beaten.

If anyone reads this and takes pity on our small crew of hard working track blokes, we could really do with an undercover storage shed/ workshop facilitily of our own, so we can do heavy repairs undercover and care for our equipment. Please get in touch, we’d be open to sponsorship, naming, glory or fame to get it across the line (fame might be a stretch…..) however if we don’t ask, we won’t find out. Please contact Will at civil@vgr.com.au if you think there’s a way of solving all our troubles.

On the up side, the district received around 25mm of rain today, so that’ll keep everything look green and fresh for a while longer.

In terms of workdays, it’s now safe to say there won’t be anything this week, Thursday and Friday will be fully dedicated to fixing things. As always if you’d really like to join you’d still be welcome, however it’ll be very much focused on getting the machinery back into a usable state. At Maldon from 8am on both days for anyone who is just itching to help out.