A rather successful day today, with the little digger seemingly proving itself, despite a flat outer tyre (which is irrelevant on rail), it didn’t cause us much trouble, oil leaks seemed to be fixable and generally it’s performance was good, so a good start.
We managed to achieve a lot, with all sleeper plates dropped and inserted for the UP leg between Boundary Trk and Rifle Range Bridge, spikes have also been dropped out, ready for drilling and spiking to begin on Thursday.
These pics don’t show a lot. However, the pleasant afternoon sun made Boundary Track a very enjoyable place to be at knock-off time.
Thursday crew will again meet directly at Boundary Trk from 8.15am.
Now we’d love nothing better than to tell you we’re not only track builders, we’re mechanic and hydraulic extraordinars, but we’re not exactly sure why it now works but didn’t before. It’s likely that we cleared the issue in one of the many valve cleanings earlier this week and just didn’t quite cycle it sufficiently to remove an airlock, however said issue is no longer and its back to its normal self, actually seems slightly better.
This morning began with another 8 fishplate changes and trimmings near Bendigo Road, however the rain beat us by 9am, so off to Castlemaine we headed.
Once we’d established it was a goer, we very promptly set about putting it all back together. Strangely, this occurred much more quickly than the disassembly.
Prior to putting the covers back on, we did a full oil and filter change (much easier access).
We’re yet to give it a real test. However, just around the Yard at Castlemaine, we were seeing the machine behaving much better than it had for at least 12 months. Tuesday, we’ll give it a proper run, dropping out and inserting sleeper plates out at Boundary Trk. Check back Monday for workday details.
We shared the Castlemaine workshop today. At the other end of the shed, the retubing of the J class was reaching the final phases, a cold water test was being undertaken, with any weeping tubes expanded a little more to seal up the tube plate/tube joins.
By the day’s end, they very successfully had the boiler holding water. No doubt there will be more on this in the Mechanical Blog. However, it’s looking very likely that they’ll be completing a hydrostatic test next week! A big step forward, congrats!
In a day that can only be described as a journey of pure excitement, we changed 50 pair of 6 hole fishplates for 4 hole fishplates. All between Maldon and Woodlocks Lane.
Unfortunately as we’re out of fishplates, it was a case of remove the plates, trim with the rail saw and then install the shortened fishplates back to where they came from. It actually didn’t quite work out like that, we tried to cut a few lengths ahead to prevent everyone having to work too near the saw, but that was the logic.
This is all in aid of installing concrete sleepers, as the long 6 hole angle plates foul the concrete sleepers fastenings, however the 4 holers fit nice between sleepers, now a very tried and tested method we employed between Muckleford and Castlemaine during the re-railing.
So we’ve not only got several thousand more fishplates to remove, cut and reinstate, it’ll likely be a lengthy process, but we can comfortably do the 50 pair in a day, however it is hard going.
We’ll continue on with this tomorrow morning, starting just near Bendigo Road from around 8.15am, however there is rain forecast, so when / if it arrives, we’ll journey through to Castlemaine where we will continue working on the Excavator.
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