These days its too overgrown and it would probably trigger a national security emergency, but in 1982 it was technically possible to pull off the highway near Wilton and trot up to the top of a hill overlooking the Main South for a Saturday morning of rail photography. To give you an idea of where I am talking about, here's a location shot showing the mighty little Suzuki which took us half way up the hill.
I have these photographs marked as January 1982, but that is just a proximate date. I do remember it got bloody hot but it was still quite fresh (and quite early) when the first train arrived - the Spirit led by a 442 and a 44.
The Spirit was followed closely by 4447 and 44223 on the Southern Aurora - worth two view of this one!
Coal - Tahmoor coal - was king this morning as the following shots show. First up, 8010 and 4880 head south - bloody telegraph poles!
Then two shots of 8031 and 48146 on an up coal - the second shot just for the white roofed van.
And then 8004 and 4809 on a down coalie.
It was also a morning for the express passenger trains - the 'varnish' as the Americans coin it. Here's a couple of landscape shots of the Canberra Monaro and then the Inter-Capital Daylight expresses.
I apologise for this next one - I was youthful and always looking for a new angle. This is a DEB set on the Riverina Express run and I decided to shoot it through a set of binoculars - oh well.
More humble passenger consists included these CPHs on the Picton squirt.
Equally prosaic was the Goulburn day train with a 48 up front.
More colourful was 4836 on its sister service.
Back to the freighters - here is an up wheatie with a 422/442 combination. I believe them to have been 42202 and 44229.
I stuffed the approach photo of the up Southern Highlands Express being led by a 421, but here it is going away as 8021 and a 48 approach on a down coal.
Finally, the aforesaid 8021 heads down the hill. And I gt the telegraph poles right on this one!
Sorry for the dark grainy nature of some of these shots. I had loaded the camera with cheap, slow Kodak film which was suitable for low light photographs. Who knows why I did - call it youthful enthusiasm. Will leave you with a degraded shot of my two compatriots that morning - father and Frank B. In the next photograph Frank is the one lining up the money shot of the day. Father looks like here is wondering when the morning tea will arrive or if the Suzuki will get towed.
Cheers, Don PS - Cheers to all my friends in Petrograd who regularly tune into this blog.
A couple of weeks ago I posted a blog about the Melbourne Express, otherwise known as the MEX. The counterpart service was called the Sydney Express, but it was rarely described in the shortened form.
As with all journeys, there had to be a start. For the Sydney Express, it was alawys Spencer Street Station in Melbourne. Here are two shots taken from August 1993 showing the two options in motive power.
I have a lot more photos of the Sydney Express than its counterpart due to geography. Saturday mornings could involve trips to Maldon or Picton to see the Express, numerous other Southern Highlands passengers and the Superfreighters. On 9 October 1993 G520 did the honours through Picton.
When the Express started it was a much larger train than its 1990s version. Here it is stretched out through Wilton in 1986 with double 81s up front.
Enough of the static representations! Here is a link to a short and jerky video of 8171 on the up Sydney Express at Maldon on 16 October 1993.
It wasn't all sunshine out there. On a foggy 20 November 1993, the third last loco-hauled Sydney Express cantered through Maldon with 8172 at the front.
Here's evdence of why this train needed to go. At least there was one other patron at breakfast on this day.
And now to where it finished, the buffer stops at platform 1 (or 2) at Sydney Terminal. G527 made it there on 20 January 1993.
Here is 8177 arriving at the same location on 29 January 1993.
Even at the end, on Saturdays decent loadings required double heading. Here is 8170 and G518 having done the work overnight and into the morning of 15 August 1993.
As the end neared, platform 2 became the preferred destination. Here are two shots from November 1993 recording such arrivals.
Finally it was over. The last service on 22 November 1993 had 4463 leading 8174 into the shade.
If you want to watch a slow moving G514 arrive at Central in November 1992, do no more than press this button!
According to my incomplete and inaccurate memory, 32 years
ago this week ‘through running' of Southern Aurora and the Spirit of Progress
commenced, with X54 and 42219 doing the honours northward on the first trip... 7 June 1982 to be precise. Can't miss this milestone without a little commemoration.
Through running simply meant that each system's locomotives weren't swapped at Albury, but worked the entire journey on these two named trains. For just over four years until these trains were 'amalgamated' in August 1986, Sydneysiders like myself could find exotic blue Victorian locos at Central. Of course, most of the times I bothered to get to platform 1 in time to see either train, there were only ever brown boxes on the front end.
Anyway, one day in 1982 just after through running started, I did capture 44225 and X51 coming off Southern Aurora.
A little while later X46 arrived on the up Spirit of Progress.
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.
OK, someone had to do it tonight. Salute the Southern Aurora, that is, and all those who thought that Australians would embrace inter-capital luxury train travel in the post war years, including the mighty Billy Wentworth.
And it is also time tonight to salute those staff and volunteers from the NSW Rail Transport Museum who have laboured over recent to restore the Museum's now heritage fleet of stainless steel carriages. The 50th anniversary re-enactment Southern Aurora looked magnificent tonight in platform 1, as I pulled into Central on my spark at 6:15pm. I was even prepared to ignore the brick on the front of the train (44211) - masking the art deco elegance of 4490 and 4306 back to back. Someone had even taken the time to thoughtfully pipe the Joye Boys' classic - Southern 'Rora - though the station intercom. If you want to feel really good for the next 2 minutes and 48 seconds, click on the following Youtube link.
Anyway, as I am one of the Southern Aurora Kids - those kids who were hoisted by their fathers into the cabs of express locomotives at Central in the hope that the dads would also be invited aboard - I figured I could not let tonight pass without blog comment.
I should point out my earliest recollection of being on a diesel was such an incident. It may not have been a 44 class, and it could have been the lesser Spirit of Progress instead of the Aurora, but I definitely recall being dressed in pyjamas, dressing gown and sleepers on platform 1 one evening. Just the sort of stylish attire that a young boy who was farewelling his grandparents should be seen out on the town in. Yep, I reckon I have years of therapy to go to overcome that childhood trauma...
So to the memories of the mighty Southern Aurora.
The following photograph dates from early 1963, when the Aurora was a novelty. This sign conjures up notions of unattainable luxury, fostered (I guess) from those trips to Sydney in Hillmans of various vintage to farewell relatives travelling to Victoria.
The next photograph was taken around the same time, showing the 'up' Aurora at its destination.
The Aurora was never going to be one of those trains I would have lots of photos of, as I was/am generally lousy at time lapse photography and not much of an early riser. But here is one of the train arriving into Central in 1983, with 8104 doing the honours.
During an early part of my 'career' I was obliged to do a fair bit of travel to Melbourne. Most of my compatriots chose the TAA option, but I risked life and limb to travel on the Aurora (and later the combined expresses). Risk life and limb? Well, on more than one occasion we'd stop in Goulburn to see what I thought was someone being released from detention (perhaps Goulburn Goal) onto the train. Moments later I would hear the cabin door open and a shadowy figure would take up residence in the top bunk. I dunno what life is like 'inside' but these blokes all seemed pretty adept at manoeuvring themselves in the dark, in very confined spaces.
However, more often or not, I was risking only loneliness. While I was committed to enjoying the delights of the Aurora, not too many others were. If you want to know why the Southern Aurora no longer runs, the following two photographs give you the answer. Some weeknights I not only had the cabin to myself, I had the whole carriage to myself. And often I would be the only passenger at breakfast. Grim times for the accountants no doubt.
The other perilous aspect to the Aurora was those times when you were lucky enough to get booked into a single-occupancy room - from memory it was called a 'roomette'. There was always the possibility of getting the toilet bowl and the wash basin confused...
And the stagger from the lounge car along the zig zag centre hallway needed careful negotiation, especially after a time spent imbibing an amber liquid or two in the lounge car. The next photo is blurry, but in my defence I may have been too at the time it was taken.
So, its late here as I type. If I was in a roomette on the 'Snora' now, I would be deep in thought watching the darkness of the NSW southern highlands flash by. Occasionally and momentarily a north-bound freighter would startle me as it passed by my window. And I would know that at 6am tomorrow I would be woken by an attendant carrying a weak milky coffee and two biscuits wrapped in plastic. But tonight I am not there, and so I am going to leave this blog where it started, with a snap of that sign, taken only just tonight.
