After a few distractions of late, it was nice to be back into replacing failed sleepers. We set out today without too greater ambition. However, we very comfortably installed 73 sleepers between Rifle Range and Brown St, leaving probably 100 to go.

We had completed the 73 easily by soon after lunch, so we set about distributing the remaining concrete sleepers right down to Brown Street, which seems to take forever, moving only 4 sleepers at a time. However, it’s all ready to continue with resleepeeing on Tuesday.

We’ll be meeting mid way between Rifle Range and Brown Street from 8.30am on Tuesday, when we’ll hopefully (maybe a little too hopeful however) knock over the sleeper installation.

Today, we had a change of pace, collecting around 500 4 hole fishplates from near Dunolly.

These were generously released for our use by RTHV and VLine, as they were otherwise heading for scrap.

Using 5 vehicles and a couple of trips back and fourth, we managed to get everything hand loaded onto pallets.

The telehandler made very light work of the task back at Maldon!

In total 9 pallets were collected, stacked, strapped and transported back to Maldon.

These plates will mean we don’t need to cut quite so many 6 holers down to 4 holers, however we do still need another 1500ish to meet all our needs, but this will be a massive help.

Tomorrow’s work will be back installing sleepers, out by Rifle Range Bridge from 8.30am.

Tomorrow’s workday will involve a bit of an away mission collecting some items being scrapped by V/Line. It’s only just up the road. However, it will all require hand loading, so any extra hands would be greatly appreciated! Meeting at Maldon at 8am.

Friday ended up being quite a successful day, with another couple of hundred sleepers dropped out past Bendigo Road and distributed as required.

We even managed to get a lot of additional weedspray completed, especially around the Castlemaine area, however all the bridges and level crossings still require this, so that will be tomorrow’s task. Meeting at Maldon from 8am, breaking into a few small groups to knock over the various areas.