Well, today, somewhat unexpectedly ended up being quite a milestone day in the rerailing.

We had just the right number of people join the gang today and we managed to install a further 10 lengths into the UP leg, this reached all the way to the existing 80lb near Brown street.

It all seemed to happen very smoothly, with the closure back to the 80lb we installed a couple of years ago completed by 2pm!

This is quite an achievement, as the UP leg, (with the exception of Sawmill Rd Crossing) is now 80lb or 94lb from Maldon right through to Winters Flat Bridge!

We should comfortably complete the Down leg down to this point next week (we were going to tackle a different project next week, but we forgot about the short week and it’ll likely no quite fit into the four days).

The days of heavy rail lying in the middle are almost behind us.

Of course the job is still a long way from complete, still thousands of sleeper plates, dogspikes and replacement sleepers are required, but it’s certainly now less of a distant goal and more of a tangible reality.

Tuesday crew will meet by the corner of Nolan’s Rd and Chapman’s Rd Castlemaine from 8.30am, to hopefully put a big dint in the Down Leg.

A very successful day today, with Rifle Range Bridge rerailing now completed.

It’s a relatively short bridge, as can be seen when compared to these 40m rails. However, as always with trackwork on Bridges, what would take 1 hour on plain track always takes half a day.

However it all progressed without hitch and the end result looks very nice.

After the bridge was completed, we set about installing a further 3 lengths of 80lb rail into the UP leg.

We’re yet to cut a closure, however, hopefully if we get a few on tomorrow’s gang, we’ll install a few more lengths.

Tomorrow’s gang will meet from 8.15am near the rerailing site, which is most easily accessed by parking on the corner of Nolan’s Rd and Chapman’s Road (entry on the east side of Pyrenees Hwy Bridge), look for the digger and wander up.

Despite the glorious weather that today provided, we did manage to achieve quite an impressive amount of rerailing.

We’ve now got the Down leg rerailed from Curve 8 down to Rifle Range Bridge.

In fact, we did so well that we even did the down leg over Rifle Range Bridge. It’s not quite complete yet, only tied up 1 in 3. However, we’ll remedy that on Thursday, when we’ll also do the UP leg over the bridge also.

Today’s total is a little uncertain… as we forgot to count… but based on the other leg, we assume we installed around 350m of rail, not a bad effort at all for a rainy day.

Thursday crew will meet at Maldon at 7.45am or out at Rifle Range Bridge from 8.15am. Unfortunately, the road is becoming quite slippery, not boggy, but slippery, so it may be wise to take it easy coming down towards the bridge.

We’ll put a more detailed blog tomorrow night. However, day one of the track inspection has gone very well.

We’ll be finishing off tomorrow, meeting in the yard at Castlemaine from 8.15am