Dubbo, from the platform

The beaut thing about Dubbo is that the station platform gave and gives an excellent viewing platform for whatever was in the yard. Although it was on the southern side of the railway, some good shots could be had. So here is a few, though I suspect the photographers shuffled off the platform to trespass down the yard at time. 

First up, 3815 is on the up Through Mail around 1964. A 36 class sits opposite.

    

A year later, Dubbo's small loco shed was found hosting two garratts, two 32s and 3818.
 

Lets move to some colour fillum! A cleaned up slide of 3237 (we suspect) and 3144T, themselves spruced up in front of the shed which needed a little sprucing itself. It was 10 April 1966.

 

Finally, for this installment, its January 1967 and 3649 and 3328 are residents at Dubbo loco depot.

That's enough for now!

Don

49 Call of the Board

Haven't tried to run through a class for a while, mainly because I run out o things to say.  Still, its raining here in Sydney and there is ironing to do so I was thinking about running through the 48s I have known... better go with the 49s.

Here's the class leader at Bathurst, sandwiched between two air-conditioned 80 class locos. Must have been summer.

In 1993 a mate of mine at work mentioned there was a green loco shunting Rozelle yard when he came to work.  That evening I raced over there at dusk, to find a shiny green 4902.  Then I slightly blurred the photo - and only found out that I had 3 weeks later when I got the film developed. Still a favourite.

Then its off to Dubbo for 4903 which, with GL109 and EL64, was about to travel to Sydney on 8178 containers on Dubbo 16 April 2006.

The name on the numberboard might say KL80 but underneath 4904 lurks - Braemar, March 2002.

Once more to Dubbo - 4905 is shut down in the loco depot in 1987.

I'll do a separate blog post about this outing at some stage, but here's 4906 with friends around 1980.
 

And again, back to Dubbo - 4907 in 1988, getting some TLC

I think I have more photos of 4908 than any other loco.  Here it is at Canterbury in 2001, pressed into freight service with 3801 Ltd.

You are going to have to trust me on this one.. it is 4909 (along with 4898 and 4918) on a metro trip.  By the time that this train turned up at Rozelle, I had run our of film. It was 30 August 1993.

 Way out west - 4910 at Broken Hill - 17 June 1988.

4911 powering out of Eumungerie to Gilgandra.

Still in the west, but the near west. Its Lithgow in 1977 or so, and 4912 is on the front of the Central West Express.

This is another 'trust me'... I do have a close up of 4913 but this shot from the bridge at Parkes in January 1981 gives a better panorama of the Forbes Mail it was hauling that night.
 

4914 in the shed at DELEC Open Day in 1996.

OK, I had to do it - bot of a trade mark when calling the board.Trainorama's 4915 is a mighty fine model.

4916 made it into preservation with the RTM.

One last trip out west - to Bathurst in the early 1980s for 4917.

Finally, another to make it all the way to preservation. 4918 at Robertson. The crew was probably off getting a pie.

So that's enough.  Hope you enjoyed it.

Ciao for now!
Don

Last ride on the West Mail

26 years ago this week the last mail trains ran in NSW. The Senior Train Hunter and yours truly had caught a fair few mail trains in the lead up to their cessation, including a number in July that year as part of a Nurail holiday which has been the subject of earlier posts.

As the time approached to their withdrawal, sensibly the administrators refused to expend scarce taxpayers' dollars on the upkeep of the superannuated rolling stock. This should have been a warning but instead I managed to convince my girlfriend of the time that a mail train would be a lovely romantic experience. She only fell for this once, but once was enough.

Concerned that I would be too late to get a berth or that she would change her mind, I remember rushing into the Central Booking Office the following day - only to find that I was the first to book on the sleeper scheduled to leave Central on Friday 18 November 1988. This also should have been a warning.

I don't recall the 46 class at the front of this august experience on the day in question.  I do however remember my companion's incredulous disbelief when I presented her with a three-car train - a MCS sitting car, a XAM sleeper and a LHY van. Her fantasy of an Orient Express experience was shattered.  

I also don't remember much of the trip. Having had a long week at work an no doubt something classy like a railway pie and a beer for dinner, I don't think I was awake at Blacktown. Like any gentleman I dispatched her to the upper bunk so I could check out anything interesting, like the loco change at Lithgow.  

So I don't really remember much at all... until Geurie about 5:30am the next day. I struggled to work out just what was up front. Turned out that there was a reason for this, as there were three Alcos hauling this massive service - 44217, 4808 & 4837.

Shot with the morning sun playing havoc with the shunter's vision, here are our trusty steeds having been detached from the train.

And now its time for a shot of the train itself.  Dubbo station is a bit of a tough place to get a decent wide shot, without a long walk around the yard and I had run out of credits so didn't even bother asking.  Instead I took a quick snap which highlights just why my travelling companion thought I had lost my mind when she first laid eyes on our carriage. 

It was none other than XAM 1888, survivor of the Sheffield Trike Challenge and still wearing its rather novel and striking livery.  As you may have guessed by now, it was hardly worthwhile suggesting further rail-related activities that day!

I did manage a snap of the XPT as it arrived later that day - the XPT was to return us to the big smoke that afternoon.  I managed to fluff the photograph, but have included it in this blog to show you just how tight the clearances were and may still be in Dubbo. 

And no, you don't need to ask - I wasn't encouraged to tour the Science Train parked in the dock!

Ciao for now!
Don

Central in the 80s, at night

I am no photographer, especially after dark, and now I am going to prove it in a three-part series.

I walked through Central and Sydney Terminal hundreds of times in the 1980s, and particularly in the latter half when I was commuting from the coast. Usually I was rocketing through, late for a train. Sometimes there was a chance to stop and smell the diesel exhaust in the air, usually on Sunday nights. So here is a collection of shots taken of mainline diesels at those times, things that seemed fairly humdrum then....

First up, the ubiquitous XPTs. I must have been very mellow to get the camera out of the bag for this shot.

Electric locos made it into Central rarely after the electrification to Newcastle went through. The major exceptions were to work the Gold Coast Motorail, the Brisbane Limited, and successor services. On dusk, 8605 is on one such service.

For a period, much later in the evening the West Mail and northern mail trains were also worked by electrics, and here is class leader 4601 being readied to go west on what was, from memory, a two car plus van consist.

Onto diesels... here is a rather daggy and slightly overexposed 4480 resting on one of the relief roads. It could be the 'spare', as the Railways often kept a backup loco at Central to cover a failure.

In keeping with the daggy 44 theme, here is the class leader shut down.

Now I am going to run through a fair proportion of the GM 422 class roster, starting with an immaculate 03.

42209 has just worked an up service from the Southern Highlands, and has been decoupled from its train.

Next up is the 15th member of the 20-strong brigade, tucked away behind a FG carriage.

Possibly my favourite is 42217 peering down the yard.

And to the last of this series, bicentennial 42218 in all its glory.

And now for the last word in 80s power... 8144 readying itself at the head of the Spirit.

That's all for now: be back soon....

Nurail travels Part 3

This third installment of our 14 day tour of NSW using State Rail's Nurail pass. It covers two journeys, to the northwest and the south.

I had arrived into Sydney from Tamworth at 6:30 on the morning of Thursday 23 June 1988. After a brisk day I met the old man for a late dinner and then jumped on the then-titled 'North Mail'. On this occasion it was headed by electric loco 8602, which was to tow two sleepers (both BAMs), then six sitting cars and a LHO guards van.
We scored a couple of seats in car 7 and settled in for a pretty uncomfortable night after our 10pm departure from the capital.  At Broadmeadow, well after midnight, 4428 and 4483 replaced the 86 class. Our first glimpse of these steeds came much further north around breakfast. I think this next photo was grabbed at Armidale.



Friday afternoon approached as we drew closer to the end of the line, Tenterfield. We made it just before noon, about 30 minutes late. 
By this time, assorted shunting measures, we had been reduced in total to a sleeper, two sitting card and a van. This was to be the consist for our return journey, four and a half hours later.  This interregnum gave us a chance to walk the mile into town and back, and to get a couple of shots of the train basking in the afternoon sun.

And from behind...

It wasn't all trains... We admired the well preserved barracks and goods shed.

As it was extremely cold we boarded the train, as the only sleeping car passengers  more than an hour before our 4:25pm departure. When we did leave, it was a stuttering affair. The trailing 44 kept cutting out, so after several stops in the middle of nowhere the crew simply cut it out. This meant for a slower trip but I am not sure time mattered much for the North Mail anyway. It didn't worry us, sleeping soundly in our berths in a very cosy BAM. They were good sleepers.

It was another gawd awful hour when we got to Sydney on Saturday, well before 6:00. Although I had plans for a weekend jaunt west I chose a better option - study for approaching exams.

Sunday was another rest day of sorts. it wasn't until 7:00pm we gathered at Central for a departure on the 8:00pm Melbourne Express. I don't have a record of the locos or the train, probably because I was pretty over things by this stage.  Once again, we had opted for a sitter rather than sleeper, just for further punishment.

By Monday, 27 June, my bum had been moulded into a NSWGR seat pattern. At the gloriously early hour of 4:50am we tumbled out onto Albury station. 

It's funny how the mundane of the moment becomes a bit special later in life. Here is an ordinary shot off the footbridge.

A slightly less ordinary shot could be achieved towards the south. Here was a pristine 4458, the first red terror 44 as far as I recall, lurking in the yard.

By 12:20pm we were well and truly thankful to see an on-time S66 up Inter-Capital Daylight XPT, with 7 cars, pull into the station to carry us northwards. A mere nine hours later it arrived at Central, which meant my odyssey was over. Of course the Senior Train Hunter still had to return to the Illawarra, which he did by the means of a four car V set. At the end of that trip, 18 minutes before our tickets expired, our travels were complete.

10 things trains once carried

I am by no means nostalgic but I do have a great fear of any enterprise which deliberately specialises or narrows its focus to a very small range of products.
 
And so while it is true that along the eastern seaboard of Australia the number of rail operators is increasing, traffic volumes are continuing to grow and new rail lines are being planned, I hold concerns for the long term viability of the larger part of the Australian rail freight industry. These concerns are based on the loss of traffic sources - mostly as a deliberate decision not to compete against road freight. 

Anyway, this is neither the time or place to wax on about about such things; lets take a look at 10 commodities the railways no longer carry in NSW...

1 - Bulk fuel
A relatively recent loss of traffic in NSW, though it seems an age since the junior train hunter captured 8143 and 48158 taking this bulk load of fuel through Picton in January 2003, headed to Bomen.

2 - Bulk milk
Probably thanks to all those soy milk drinkers who just didn't exist in the 1970s, we no longer have beaut little trains like the afternoon milko running on the south coast. Here is 48120 doing the honours on one such train during that decade.

3 - Beasts of all types
In this case it was cattle.  I usually associate stock trains with bucolic branch lines, but on a hot day in February 1985 8001 and 8022 were discovered refuging their down stock train at Yass Junction.

 4 - Coke, and not the coke that is the real thing or adds life...
We are talking here coke coke.  The small black stuff that made furnaces burn brighter.  During the 1970s the NSW railways were even obliged to hire D42 from BHP to haul local goods trains, like this on down coke train captured at North Wollongong around 1978. No need these days..
 

5 - Bulk timber
Most of NSW's rail haulage of timber was confined to the north coast after 1960, such was the extent of logging during the previous 100 years!  One pleasing attempt at obtaining new timber traffic (logs for export) was made by private operator Austrac and later taken up by Freight Victoria/Australia in the late 1990s. Next is a shot of Austrac's 1872 on log train at Mt St Thomas in 1999.

6 - Bulk and loose mail
For 130 years bulk and loose mail formed the basis of NSW's country rail system, augmenting passenger revenues.  Only last week I stood at this very spot where an ATP was being loaded in the early 1980s, just as the junior train hunter asked what went on around here. Its difficult to contemplate the loss of logistical capacity associated with the demise of this freight traffic.

7 - Fresh fruit
In this case in particular, bananas! Here at Coffs Harbour X214 was found shunting a GLX into position to receive another load of Woolgoolga's finest - headed for Flemington later that 1980s day.

8 - Rutile
I have next to no idea what rutile even is, and I am certainly sure that I would prefer to stay ignorant than to go onto wikipedia to find out, but I think its white and used in cement, and I think that the first wagon behind 5490 as it passed by Enfield loco depot in the mid-1960s was a rutile hopper. Just a guess really. 

9 -  Money!
And it was carried to the thousands of railway employees in these cute little railway pay buses, such as this day in 1982 in Grafton.

10 - And interesting stuff...
One thing the NSW railways did really well for a very long time was the unexpected but important socio-economic and community-building stuff - like better farming trains, baby clinics and dental trains, hospital trains during the war, 'reso' trains, coronation trains and just 'interesting stuff' trains stocked with semi-valuable curios from museums (the real valuable stuff was never let out).   

And even if you couldn't see in, the carriages were always painted in an interesting way, like these depowered Tulloch carriages which were co-opted into the NSW Exhibition Train in the late 1970s.

There are many more examples of commodities lost to rail over the last four decades.  Hopefully one day I can do a splob on 10 things now on rails, one day soon.