Shunting at the mill sidings

The morning of the 5th October 1983 sees W250 shuffling wagons around the sidings at Bunge's Garden City Flour Mill at Ballarat North. Having retrieved empty VHGY's from the siding with the discharge pit, W250 now places 3 VHGY's with wheat from Berriwollock for unloading.

W250 then retrieves a VPFX, KMQ and a VLCX that had been left on the mainline, and then pulls forward into flour mill sidings.

 

W250 then pushes the wagons to the McArthur Street end of the siding, where the VLCX is uncoupled. W250 then pulls forward positioning the KMQ and VPFX adjacent to the overhead loading pipes. 

W250 uncouples from the wagons pulls forward to clear the points, then reverses back onto the mainline and the waiting wagons. 

With shunting complete, W250 departs for Ballarat yard. The sidings will be shunted again by the afternoon flour mill pilot when the empty VHGY's and the full flour wagons will be collected.  The pilot usually takes approximately 25 minutes to complete shunting in the flour mill sidings.