A very exciting day today, with many hundreds of concrete sleepers distributed beside the track, most of those dropped off the train yesterday infact. Unfortunately this is one job that does seem to take an age, running backwards and forwards, even using the trolley it still seems to drag on forever! Anyway, only many many thousand to go now. We’ll likely make this a summer job on days when it’s too hot to do much else.

The gang spent their time collecting, stacking and banding up the gluts, which in itself takes a while.

We then moved on to stacking up old removed sleepers by Sawmill Rd for disposal.

In unrelated matters, the little digger has had its rotating head removed to assess the source of the leak. This little O ring seal on the grab circuit valve block was all it was. Fortunately, accessing it is most of the battle. The fixing it is quite straight forward now.

Thursday’s crew will meet out at Boundary Track from 8.30am, where we’ll have a big clean up of all the mess from there down to where we’ve installed sleepers so far.

We managed to get two full train loads of sleepers out beside the track today, approximately 700 sleepers. These were all stored around Maldon Yard and are still arriving, hence the need to make more space. There’s still another couple of thousand to come hopefully, while they look a lot on the train, when they’re out trackside, it’s obvious a train load doesn’t actually go too far.

We’ve managed to get a few impressive stacks out between Bendigo Road and the first curve. However, there will still be a few more train loads needed here to meet the 100% quota.

We also managed to diagnose another small issue with the telehandler’s transmission, a rather rusty and intermittent solenoid coil! The one pictured isn’t actually the issue. It’s one that’s located, of course, in a very awkward location!

Upon removing it, it did somewhat disintegrate, it is possibly still usable, however we have a healthy stock of spares, so first job tomorrow is refitting that and making sure it works, the result of that will dictate what tomorrow actually holds.

Tomorrows workday will begin at Maldon, from around 8.30-8.45am, a little later than usual.

Today was surprisingly successful, not only distributing the last of the plates required to Brown Street, all plates are now under the rail and one whole leg has been drilled and spiked!

This means that all going well, tomorrow’s gang will comfortably drill and spike up the other leg, from Rifle Range to Brown Street, marking (almost) the end of the long section of drilling and spiking.

Tomorrow’s gang will meet at Rifle Range Bridge from 8.30am

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.