Hey Porter!

With apologies to the late great John R Cash, I thought I would post a few photos of a class of loco that we saw all the time (being Wollongongians) but never thought to hunt down before it was nearly too late. The eight Porters at Australian Iron & Steel's Port Kembla's steelworks.

We never snapped them in action but thankfully the senior photographer worked at Australian Iron & Steel and so risked life, limb, disciplinary charges and an honourable mention in the Illawarra Mercury just before the demise of 75% of the class in early 1975 to get the following four snaps inside the plant.

Here is a line of stored locos. OK, so we can't really blame him for cutting off the front of the first loco.  This was being shot on an Agfa Instamatic which had a viewfinder that indicated the general direction in which the photo would be taken.

Better luck with this side-on shot.
 

The next two shots show the last hours of the unlucky six locos -Bandicoot, Brolga, Baradine, Burrawa, Bellbird and Badger.

In writing up this post I actually discovered that only Bandicoot had been built by Porter in the USA. Four of the class were built by Clyde and three in the steelworks itself.  And apparently I thought Badger had escaped the fate of its siblings to reside in Dorrigo but authoritative sources (Wikipedia) suggests that it is actually Bantam with Badger's plates. So, it appears I am never too old to learn a couple of things.

Ciao for now!
Don