Today was largely another rerailing preparation day, with almost all the fishplates along the down leg dropped out, greased and bolts dropped out, and rails moved up ready for insertion.

It’s now all set for a big effort to knock over a large chuck of this straight next week, weather permitting!

Although we focused more heavily on the prep today, we did still make a start on the Down leg, with 100m worth of 80lb rail installed and joined back into the old 60lb.

We’ve started square with the other leg and then installed a 20m rail to give an even 1/2 rail stagger to the joints. This was almost impossible to achieve in the other section, given the range of rail lengths. However, we’ve got very uniform lengths of 80lb, so it’s much more manageable here.

Given that we’ve got a public holiday on Tuesday next week, we’ll be having the day off. However, things should be normal on Thursday and Friday if the weather forecast improves. We’ll put an update up here on Wednesday to confirm the details.

Another very successful day today, with the UP leg from Sawmill Rd to Boundary Trk now rerailed with 80lb.

It all began very smartly this morning with the remainder of the screws removed, clips knocked off and well before morning tea, rail being swapped over.

Today’s start location, just prior to swapping rail.

By morning tea we’d installed and clipped up around 3 lengths.

However by lunch, we’d completed all 7 lengths, including the cutting in of the closure and all clipping up.

After lunch, we set about preparing the other leg, with all the dog spikes removed the full length. It turns out it’s a very long way! Approximately 1km in length.

This year, since acquiring a second spike puller in the bundle of equipment last year, we’ve got two pullers in action. We’re actually finding this puller to be much more effective, particularly on some of the older dog spikes, as it has a different style of head. However, the use of the two speeds things up to no end.

In summary today saw us install 7 lengths, a total of 280m. So in the past few weeks we’ve managed to install 960m of rail, which is a pretty good effort!

Tomorrow’s crew will be making a start on the other leg, beginning back near Sawmill Rd, meeting there from 8.15am

Well, we’re well and truly back into the swing of rerailing! Both Friday and today were very successful days, with bulk of the UP leg between Sawmill Rd and Boundary Trk now 80lb rail.

Fridays gang removed all the spikes from this leg, in readiness for rerailing (only about every 5th sleeper still had spikes, screws or concrete at the rest), this is a massive time saver on rerailing day. Friday also saw another 2 lengths of 80lb installed, in addition to Thursday’s effort.

Today’s crew managed a staggering 8 lengths, very comfortably. This being due to Friday’s preparatory works.

We did get fortunate with joint locations today, with no rails needing trimming, just the closure back to 60lb needed the rail saw.

By the end of the day, we were all very happy with our efforts, we finished on site a little early to collect fishplates and reload the truck while we could before Thursday.

We’ve only got 7 lengths to go on Thursday to reach Boundary Track, at which point we’ll then jump over to the other leg and get on with that.

Thursday’s gang will meet at Maldon at 8am or on site (Boundary Track Crossing) from 8.30am.

Well we’re back into the re-railing program, with a good start made today on the UP side of Sawmill Rd.

A total of 7 x 40m lengths of 80lb rail were installed (unlike last year’s rerailing with 94lb, all of this year’s will be 80lb).

We have modified our process a little, where we collect the old jewellery as we go, its tidier, but is a bit more time consuming.

Otherwise all very much the same as last year, we have been trimming the occasional rail, this will allow us to avoid using any bar plates (as we have none).

We had to swap a couple of rails over, they’d obviously been unloaded incorrectly off the train, but that was an easy fix.

By the end of the day however, all the concretes were clipped up and it was already looking much better! We’re a little slower than last year, but that’s just because we need to re-learn all the little tips and tricks (such as making sure there’s a spare blade for the saw on the digger!).

Tomorrow’s crew will be continuing on, meeting out on site near Sawmill Road from 8.30am