It was a bit of a long boring day, however all dogspikes are now driven in (into holes drilled yesterday and today), all the way from Boundary Trk to Rifle Range Bridge, along the UP leg. Just all of the other leg and then down to Brown Street to go!

The plan was to use the excavator to tamp up the section Boundary Trk to Sawmill Rd, while the spiking was occurring. However, the tamper had other ideas, deciding after about 20mins in that one it’s tynes would rather crack off its weld and stop working. If it’s not one thing it’s another!!!

Once that was done, collecting the old timber sleepers was undertaken between Sawmill Rd and Boundary Trk, with a little more to go, then it’ll look quite neat and tidy again.

The offending part is now down at the Castlemaine workshop for repair when they get time.

The digger was instead diverted to dropping out concrete sleepers from Boundary Trk down the hill until we ran out, approximately 160 were dropped out and roughly another 100 are needed to finish down to Rifle Range, however there are plenty there now to keep us busy for a good while, however we do need to complete the spiking of the down leg first.

At the end of the day, we ran the digger through to Muckleford, so we can begin sorting through the piles of mess to collect enough sleeper plates to do the down leg next week, we’ll be setting us a sieve table to hopefully help reduce the back breaking bending over. Meeting at Muckleford from 8.15am.

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.

We’ve put the digger through its paces today, with a trip up to Maldon and back to Boundary Trk.

We’ve managed to blow a tyre and develop a significant leak in a hydraulic hose in that process, so it’s all back to normal!!

We’ll be meeting at Boundary Track from 8.15am tomorrow, no need to meet at Maldon, just straight to site.

The little digger… she goes!!

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!