The trouble with someone else's history

Here is the penultimate collection of photograph reels I have in my collection, but were taken by Ian Brady way back in 1955.  Several posts from 2014 explain how these arrived in my possession, which I won't cover here for sake of brevity.

The date is 1 August 1955 and it seems that Ian was in the company of others when he visited the Port Kembla area to photograph the industrial locos working that day. As with anything from nearly 66 years ago, the photos are both historic and (sometimes) a bit puzzling.

The first photo is no puzzle - it is 1806 and it is in steam.  Port Kembla was not this loco's last stop - in 1957 it was sold to the Wallarah Coal Company and worked the Catherine Hill Bay railway for a further 6 years.

More of Ian's photos containing little mystery include these three.  First up, PWD 79 sneaking out of the shot... 

Second, PWD 28 - otherwise known as Kembla -  dealing with some troublesome S trucks. 

Thirdly, PWD 75... another diminutive shunting loco showing its elegant heritage.

Now things get murkier, at least if you are relying on my brain cells.  From memory this was one of several electric locos used to shunt the ER&S plant.  Happy to hear otherwise.

And ER&S's steam shunter????

And here is, I think, a Lysaght loco - Alison or Kathleen or somesuch young lady. (Now confirmed as  ER&S 0-6-0ST No.2, Andrew Barclay 2256/1948- thanks Zane (see below)).

And here is the greatest mystery for me.  Initially I had this loco pegged as E18, which now resides at Thirlmere in far better shape.  But it could be the loco once called Bogan. That loco was based at the Port Kembla steelworks between 1939 and 1959, but I have only a very poor comparison photo so am not sure.  Bogan had a huge role in Illawarra railways - hauling the first trains in the region before the South Coast railway was linked to the wider NSW network.  So here it is - guess away!!!!

Happy to field any suggestions!

Cheers

Don

 

More orange stuff - this time out in the wild

Time for yet another instalment of 'things that went past the back fence' in North Wollongong. In this series I dredge up dead and damaged slides from the 1970s, just to show that if you stand in one place long enough the whole world will pass you by.

And so it was with locomotives owned by the company I knew as Australian Iron & Steel - AIS for short.

Lets start with a lesson in physics. Here is two photos of D44 on a short down goods, taken at a time when it was on hire to the NSW Railways in the late 1970s.  The time elapsing between the two photographs can be measured by the time taken to wind on a Praktika ML3, and then reset the focus. There is a little bit of nearly everything in the load.

Another going away shot, this time with double AIS locos nose to nose. Photos taken in this location generally meant that the photographer wasn't paying enough attention to what was happening over the fence, or was too busy having morning tea to get the money shot.

This time the photographer had been on his game, getting a lovely shot of a coke working.  The Victorian and South Australian railway commissioners' wagons add to the character of this working - there is nothing NSWGR about it, apart from the railway lines.. 

I will finish up with the following late afternoon shot, which I may have posted previously but the fresh-painted CHS wagon is so nice it deserves republishing.

Cheers all!
Don

The lost children of Wollongong

The last two posts have been rather sombre affairs so I thought I would take it up a notch before the month is out... this time covering the motley collection of vehicles which seemed to congregate on the eastern (down) side of Wollongong station.  

I had started planning this post with a question - which wagon or carriage are you aware of that stayed in (some sort of) service but remained in the same place for the longest.  I had been thinking the diner parked near platform 15 at Sydney Terminal - it always seemed to be there in the 1970s and 1980s.  I have surprised myself by apparently taking a photo of it (AB91 methinks) in 1981, and then being able to find it for this post.

But I digress, Wollongong. This next shot was taken sometime between March 1961 when the Budds were introduced to the Illawarra, and mid-1965 when steam had disappeared.  The photo was taken from one of Dad's favourite family-dinner-out locations, the top floor of the Sydney Wide Discount store on the corner of Crown Street and Gladstone Avenue.  We got hundreds of chip dinners on the top level of this store, so Dad could snap shots like the following.

From the shadows, I am guessing this was a midday sojourn.  My interest is only for the three vans in the left of the picture, but I guess other readers may be interested in what was squatting around the turntable.  This next shot gives you a better view of its inhabitants.

But I digress once more... back to the vans.  Rolling into 1966, 3014T did a week or so of relief work in the Illawarra whilst the usual 30 tank was serviced.  On dusk on 28 April 1966, 3014T can be seen pulling past one of the more unusual vehicles in the collection.

One day I will Photoshop that slide.  OK, by 1969 when the NMRA visited rainy Wollongong and points south in CPH19, the line up may have changed somewhat.

I have nothing from the seventies to add right now, but the following snap from the favoured location in 1980 shows the collection of vans had been joined by an FO-type carriage.  And yes, not ot digress again but those orange things in the yard are AIS diesels.

It only took me two years to get around to it, but I did manage to photograph that carriage.  I could be totally wrong but I think it was carrying the title of L875 at the time.

And here is L875 with its collection of six runty orphans.

I suspect the line-up didn't stay together for long.  By December 1983 L875 had been joined by a number of cream-coloured vehicles.

And then the great leveler, electrification, came.  This final shot show Wollongong yard under transformation.  The little collection of vehicles have gone - most likely trundled at a slow speed to the back of Port Kembla, then torched. Oh dear, ending a blog on another sad note.

I will try to devise a cheery post over the next week or so.

Don

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