Back to the (Blue) 80s

Just fiddling around with photos on a lazy Saturday afternoon, looking back at what once rolled along the Metro Goods line in Sydney.  In the early 2000s I spent a fair amount of time on Canterbury station platform - these were 'days out' with the young fella or 'lunchtimes' taken while commuting between offices for work. 

I was there to get photos of DLs and GMs and even Austrac's 1872 and 1873. Instead I seemed to get a lot of 80s, blue 80s, and I am fairly glad I did now. So here is a selection of 13 blue 80s in ascending number order from 2001 - all bar two of them are at Canterbury.

8005 - light engine, 16 August 2001. 

8011, mill wheat, 22 January 2001.

8015, mill wheat, 23 April 2001.

8017, mill wheat, 11 April 2001.

8021, empty trip container train, 15 November 2001.

Intermission from Canterbury - 8025 in town on the suburban ramp up to Central, 5 August 2001.

8031, Cooks River, 16 November 2001.

Back to Canterbury - 8033, 5 October 2001.

8039, up mill wheat, 15 November 2001.

8040, spoil train, 16 August 2001. being led by 48116).

8045 on a trip container train on 22 January 2001.

8047, light engine, 9 October 2001.

And to finish with the baby of the class, 8050, on containers on 2 October 2001.

Ciao for now!
Don

North Gong coalies

It is time for another installment in 'What went past the back fence at North Wollongong?' - this time covering diesel-hauled coal trains. My 4 January 2014 post carries a swag of photographs covering steam-hauled coalies, and you electric-loving fiends will not be left out as I have a few snaps of electric-hauled coalies too, just waiting for a future post.

But now, to bust the myth that coal on the Coast meant double 48s (though 99% of the time from 1964 to 1994 it did!), here goes with a smattering of battered and torn slides and prints of (mainly) other types of diesels hauling the black diamond.

Before 48s there were 70s.. and in the early 1960s 7001 and 7009 got to tread the mainline with one such service.

Then this was no doubt a complete surprise - a trialling 49 and the class leader no less.  No wonder the shot is framed crookedly.  Thought to be around September 1963.

The late 1970s was not a period of  high fashion in Wollongong. If there was colour in anything, it was likely to be the wrong hue.  This partially explains the colour combination in the next train, led by double BHP D class locos. Just why anyone would bother painting a CHS coal wagon in gloss is beyond me.  It looks rather dandy in the afternoon sun.

Sorry if you got the idea that this would be a 48 free zone.  Here's a couple, with 4847 leading 48159 in the first shot and two 48s on the Coalcliff coalie in the second. Both are morning shots from 1980 or so, which suggests that I was too scared of the bull in the paddock on the sunny side to cross the lines (using the underpass at the creek of course) with my then-new Practika camera.

It wasn't all double 48s. Sometimes a mainlner would be conscripted - such as on this evening in 1980ish when 4419 got the 2nd loco job.

Around the 1980s a series of terrific NSW rail photography books emerged, like Units in Focus. Cracking photography by real pros with serious lenses. They all told stories of big lash-ups, even quad workings over the Liverpool Ranges.  Stuff almost unheard of on the Coast on those days and now, of course, routine to the point of mundane. 

The closest we seemed to get to the big locos in the Illawarra was on weekends, when some serious coalies ran in from the west on Sunday afternoons - at least that is when I saw them.  So here are three, and the first is triple 80s - 41, 23 and 34on a down coal headed to the Inner Harbour.

Next up is another all-Alco offering - this time an 80 and a 44 lead 44212 back to the big smoke.

And the third offering from that period involes 8027, 8016 and 8032. I have great memories of these trains passing, as they usually were working up into the higher notches.  Whereas 48s burbled along, these mainliners made time.

By the late 1980s we were into well into the candy era.  Just didn't sit well at the front of a coal train, as shown by these double 81s.

While things then got fairly boring for a while, by the 1990s variety crept into loco workings once more.  On 9 May 1993 I managed to get 8027 leading 42204, 8148 and 8182 northward on a coal.

And finally, near to times present.  These days its a steady diet of 82s - believe me, they rumble past my residence with alarming frequency.  One coal working I have yet to mention is the Metro Colliery working - usually with a 82 top and tail these days.  On the 14th day of 2005 8257 one on the end of one such service... Someone needed to do a spot of mowing by then - its starting to interfere with the photography!

Ciao!

Budds on the coast

I have the pleasure of a rail bus ride on a crappy 30 year old bus which smells like it was parked at a tip overnight, so am thinking fondly of those days when one could jump on the Budd cars forming a South Coast Daylight Express service, maybe get a pie or at least Paul's ice cream bucket, and free chilled water.

Actually its just a chance to expose a few marginal shots of Budds in their glory days and long decline. Throughout this period, their ride characteristics were sublime. Perhaps V sets provided superior comfort, but they didn't have a lady in uniform selling ice creams.

First up, I think this shot dates from 1963. It shows a passenger service and a bridge in much more aesthetically pleasing condition than today's aspect.

Next up is a shot of an up passenger service on a dark day at Sutherland. It's from a grotty slide but the feeling of being close to Mordor is conveyed even though its just the Shire.

Time for a few late period snaps. Here's a Alco cross - 4461brings the down morning SCD into Kiama with its complement of depowered Budds trailing a power van and a Tulloch carriage, while   4474 is about to take its similarly-composed train north.

And here is pretty much where I lost interest in passenger trains on the coast... 42214 hauling the last loco-hauled SCD as it approaches Wollongong. 

And here is what the SCD turned into (figuratively) when it got to Sydney... A locoless service.

I can't leave this post at this point so it is time for one more. Regular readers of this blog may recall my incomplete series on trains passing through North Wollongong. So to finish, a Budd set in its heyday, looking marvellous and sounding better as it really warms up to the task of being an express passenger service.

Its amazing how the Railways managed to run these trains at top speed, 7 days a week until they fell apart, without the need to routinely close large lengths of railway line for weekend track maintenance. The modern trains must really pound the rails in a way the Budd cars never did. Just saying...