We had a very successful day today, with a significant number of dips and minor geometry issues removed between Brown St and Boundary Track, we also finally completed tamping near Brown street while in the area. The last of ballast has been boxed up and the whole section is looking very smart. Over the next week or so, once it’s had a few trains over it settle the ballast, we’ll raise the speed limit in this section back up to 25mph, just as it used to be.

We’re hopeful on Thursday, of having a bit of a go at installing some full depth concrete sleepers near Maldon, it’ll be a trial day or two, learning what works and what doesn’t. We’ll meet at Maldon at 8am and work out the exact plan of attack then, however we’ll probably attack the area near the old tip crossing first.

This morning involved an excursion to Daylesford and back to collect/drop off a few items.

However upon returning to Maldon, the lack of formal workday was made use of to build this truly hideous looking thing.

It’s a ballast scrapper, set to the exact height of a full depth concrete sleeper. The idea being well lift the rail 150mm, remove the old sleepers and use this to sit on the rail head and allow a level ballast/gravel base to be made for the concrete sleepers going in. The extra large cut outs are to clear fishplates.

It is most certainly the most ugly, probably the most flimsy and unbeautiful one of its kind, however for a mark 1 trial, it’ll do the job. We haven’t got an area quite ready to test it properly, however it certainly seemed to do its intended purpose when poked between a couple of timber sleepers in the river gravel section, time will tell, hopefully the week after next we might get to have a little try of this.

Next week should be back to situation normal, with Tuesday’s workday, fingers crossed, back to tamping near Brown Street and dip removal up by Boundary Trk. The plan will be to meet at Boundary Track at 8.30am.

A very successful day today with an enormous amount of sorting of the Muckleford Mess! It looks much tidier and will be much more manageable going forward.

We even got to properly test out our new diesel tank with it’s fancy automotive nozzle. It makes fuelling all our vehicles much easier!!

Unfortunately, there won’t be a formal workday tomorrow, as we do need to do a few catch up jobs off site following all the recent failures (which for now are holding together!) Things should be back to normal next week, as we’re getting on top of all these extra jobs now.

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.