It’s the middle of the month already, and I’ve been busy. Since October 2015 I’ve been a member of the Ballarat Tramway Museum here in town. Over the last few months I’ve worked to provide help (by training I’m a Telecoms and IT guy) and doing whatever else comes up and needs doing. In December I began training to become a Tram conductor. Having finished my training I became an Assistant Conductor, but could not work alone. I needed to pass a Railway Category 3 medical to step up from Assistant conductor to full conductor. This is the same medical needed to work on any railway or tramway here in Australia; essentially the medical for everything not a driver. Today I passed that medical, which means that as of this weekend I can go out with a driver as a fully fledged tramway conductor for the museum. Hooray for me – one item struck off my bucket list. Later this year or early next year I’ll be looking to begin training to become a tram driver.
This week I’ve done other things for the museum (which has given me much enjoyment). With upcoming beautification work we needed to upgrade the original 1972 trackwork on the museum roads. So this week two and three roads (the ones closest to the right hand side (if looking at the museum) had work done to lift rails, replace sleepers, relay trackand then back fill for safety. While a lot of it was done with the help of equipment, there’s only so much that a machine can do before you need to have a body. I was gladly one of those bodies.
I was only able to help out on Tuesday and Wednesday but boy did I learn a lot about laying track. This all thanks to our blokes and the track crew from Maldon (Victorian Goldfields Railway) for their track laying ability. Here’s a visual update of what happened on our full size layout, instead of the model, this week.
April 12
April 13
Andrew's Trains 