Another reasonably successful day today, with almost everything between Sawmill Rd and where we completed installing concrete sleepers last week, is now tamped up, including all existing and new sleepers.

However, it failed to be a complete success as the little digger developed a rather severe hydraulic leak somewhere in the grab circuit (also the tamping head squeeze circuit) with about 50 sleepers to go. No idea at this stage if it’s serious or a simple o ring, however it appears to be coming from a valve body rather than a hose, which isn’t a great sign… Unfortunately given the work this machine has done, we’re certainly at the point of spending as much or more time fixing it as we are using it.

In good news, the big digger was put through its paces, unloading a truck load of concrete sleepers and a complete success is all that can be said there! It’s even had an oil change and fresh filters!

Thankfully the little digger is still usable, provided we don’t wish to do any grabbing, which will mean its right to use to help in sifting through the pile of plates at Muckleford tomorrow!

We could use an extra truck driver at Maldon at 8am (Clive… if you happen to see this) and then we’ll all be meeting at Muckleford Yard, in amongst the concrete sleepers from 8.30am.

Another extremely successful day today. With a further 73 concrete sleepers inserted and clipped up, we ran out of sleepers just past the curve. Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll need to run another sleeper train as there’s still a few hundred required.

While all this was going on, a full-length track weedspray was undertaken to get control of any growth.

The afternoon consisted of exciting activities such as collecting the last of the old jewellery and dropping out more sleeper plates.

Around 2 more pallets of plates still needed to finish off the last section.

Any failed sleepers right down to Brown Street have been marked

Today marks the end of this week, with no workday tomorrow for various reasons. We’ll be back into it on Tuesday. Check back Monday for details. However, it’ll likely involve sorting through more jewellery at Muckleford to get the last of the sleeper plates required.

Sleepers today, in between showers. All in the usual way, albeit quite slow through the cutting due to the limited space available.

We’ve managed to install and clip up 101 sleepers, with a further installed but not clipped up, as we ran out of biscuits. This has taken us down to the curve, meaning the long straight is now re-sleepered! Still lots of tamping to go however.

Thursday’s crew will be continuing with this task, working around the track weedspray, all going well with the weather. Meeting at Maldon at 7.45am or out at Boundary Trk from 8.15am.

Well, after a slightly less than successful week last week, digger wise anyhow, today has actually been very successful, with the little digger now fixed (turned out to be a very simple bit of gunk in the way of the selector cylinder), however we would appreciate some credit for the impressive piece of engineering we did on Thursday to keep the digger in gear! Ratchet straps always a handy toolbox item!

And on the big digger front, its new slew reduction gearbox is now in and fitted! It arrived on Friday, and we’ve wasted no time getting it installed. We ran out of time to connect up the hoses today, but we’ll get to that tomorrow or Wednesday, give it a good test and then send it back into the field to do another 20 years of work!

Friday’s last minute workday was quite successful too, with around 100 fishplates removed, shortened and reinstalled.

It’s not a lot of fun, but it’ll save us hours of work when it comes to resleepeeing.

We’re now well past Bendigo Road with this, approximately 1/3 of the way along this rather long straight.

Tomorrow’s workday, however, we’ll be back at Boundary Trk, meeting at Maldon from 7.45am or out on site from 8.15am. We’ll select the precise job based on the weather in the morning. It’ll either be dropping out more sleeper plates or installing concrete sleepers. Fun either way.