A few from the south

School holidays in our family meant the chance to hook up an impossibly small caravan to the family 4 cylinder vehicle and tour the off-peak locations of the State of NSW - read, the Snowies in summer and the North Coast beach tour in May. Regardless of where we went, there was always a railway line just around the corner.

January 1978 was no different to many other family holidays.  Baking in the car, baking in the caravan.  Visiting towns where you literally melted into the bitumen.  And that brings us to Tumut.  Well, just outside of Tumut, near Gilmore.  Here we waited one weekday morning for the arrival of the railmotor from Cootamundra (the motor from Coota in local venacular).  

While I can't tell you the precise date I do remember the time - just after 9am.  Moreover, I remember the local radio station - most likely 2WG from Wagga Wagga - finishing the news broadcast, resulting in Herb Albert's Tijuana Brass playing the introduction to the John Laws program.  How's that for errant trivia? Anyway, double CPHs hove into view around this time.  There was no way you would be getting a closer shot that this one - too many Joe Blakes at that time of year.

The other notable railway location we visited that holiday was Griffith.  Notable because it was at least 45 degrees.  Two shots were grabbed that day.  I suspect the 2 car diesel is the connection off/to the Riverina Express, while the X class was just doing its stuff.

The lack of shadows in these two shots give a clue to the time of day - high noon or thereabouts.  

Until next time!
Don

Sidings

Sidings. I have known a few. I am just returned from three weeks in the southern USA, largely not train watching (in fact, I had a remarkable ability to only maintenance work being undertaken) and the rear end of trains disappearing into the distance.

From the little I saw I was reminded just how much industry was still served by rail sidings, compared to what I have become accustomed to here on the eastern seaboard of Australia. It rubs against my preconceived ideas of the lean, highly competitive stripped-back US rail freight business, with big, long unit trains. In the southern US states (at least) most towns had at least one operating siding. Lots of tanker (oil and gas) and ‘box car’ loadings.  This brought with it a fair smattering of what I call conglomerate trains – that is, not a uniform or unit loading.  This traffic was not the sole province of short line operators either – I managed to see BNSF, UP and Norfolk Southern operating trains which carried grain, auto-racks, flats, boxcars and gondola traffic, all in the single train. It was most refreshing!

Sadly, in New South Wales, this sort of traffic has gone to road and it unlikely to ever return due to our predilection to rip up infrastructure and to straight-rail sidings. Even the trains we classify as ‘shunts’ like the Harefield shuttle and the Grafton/Coffs Harbour cement are trains carrying one or two types of commodity (containers and sugar/cement, respectively).

Bringing this ramble back home, it got me thinking about sidings.  I didn’t make a practice of photographing sidings as a youngster and I kick myself now, for the Illawarra was rich with them.  Apart from colliery and quarry sidings, there were coke sidings, co-op sidings, milk sidings, general goods, fuel depots and probably others I can’t recall. Anyway, I have gathered a few snaps from around the State of NSW where the focus wasn’t on the main line. So here goes…

Here's a siding I photographed deliberately - the United Dairies siding at Lithgow 3 October 2002. 

Sticking with the milky theme - Tumut in 1981.

Another sort of dairy siding (I love milk) - Gloucester 12 February 1993.

  

A siding for another sort of liquid - Armidale fuel siding on 9 July 1994.

Happy to be corrected but I think Unanderra had the only cattle race in the Illawarra by the 1980s. Not the finest shot!

Further south, Bomaderry had 48127 attending some wagons in one of its sidings on 28 July 1993.

 

 Back up north, 48140 and 4475 are about to leave Ardglen's ballast quarry siding on 25 October 1991.

 And then to Barraba, where 4861 was heading a container train out of its siding in 1977.

 And lets wrap up with a black & white photograph of a loco that did its best work in a siding... X202 at a busy Yass Town in early the 1970s.

Cheers!

Don