Gosford in steam

One of my earliest memories is a dull, wet day where the all-pervading ambience was grey. Them, in amongst all the drabness, a patch of life... green. I was about four years of age. 

What am I describing? None other than a family holiday in the rain to Gosford, and our arrival at the railway yard.  All these years later the photo taken of that very scene still startles me with its verdant contrast.

The beautiful 3813, having come off an up passenger service, rests in all its finery.

Welcome to Gosford, a haven for train hunters (steam loco hunters in particular), in the sixties. The following photos were all taken by members of the previous generation of my family during that decade, usually whilst en route to Hawkmount (a story for another day).

I am not going to wax lyrical with words in this post; just let the photos do justice to the variety and activity of railway scenes which could be found at Gosford in those years. Lets start with Nanny 3524, at rest.

That nanny is no longer with us, as is this one... 3509.

A third Nanny found at this location was 3532...

35 class locos did actually run, as evidenced in the following yard shot. Here one heads a 36 class loco on a fright, waiting to follow the 44 class diesel which is coming up though the yard.

And here is what looks like 3532 hooked up to the front of a Garratt, ready to head north on W44 ore.

 

Enough of the English stuff... Here is US imported 5911, courtesy of Lima Locomotive Works by Baldwin, taking a rest in the sun.

And in near to the same position, a home grown 38 Pacific.

I am going to finish up with a bit of modern steam power... A copy of a deteriorating slide of a refurbished 6037 leading 6042 on a northbound freight.

Then, as a precursor to the next instalment on this city, diesel power in the form of 4008 having worked north with electric loco 4631.

Until next time!

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.

Bathurst, the prequel...

In October 2012 I posted a shots on this blog around Bathurst in the diesel era. Today's posting shifts the form of locomotion from diesel to steam.  

Here is a small selection of shots taken mainly by the Senior Train Hunter and your scribe from the last years of steam through to the present.

Lets start with a typical shunting scene, being 2606 rumbling around the yard.

Then its across to the loco shed for a mikado, believed to be 5914 or more likely, 5910.

Staying at the depot, this time it is a very grubby 3112.

And coming right forward in time to 1994, here is the incomparable 3801 being watered in the east dock on its return from Dubbo.

And now its time to show a selection of shots of 5112, the loco which has made its home in the Carillon City. First up it is stored at the station in 1975, having been rescued for preservation.

Then someone from the Council got to it with some cheap garish paint. To their credit, it was put undercover.

And now as it is today, in a magnificent shed and having undergone a very comprehensive and flattering cosmetic restoration.

The rather amazing thing about this range of photos is that, if it really is 5910, then everyone of the locos shown have survived in preservation to this day. It seems visiting Bathurst may be good for your longevity!

To finish up, here is 5917 in preservation at Bathurst in the early 1980s.

A Forbes special

Popped past Forbes railway station around noon today to find 1432 and 8044 ready to depart with 8116.

And from the other angle...

A nice looking combination. So nice that I wasn't looking where I was walking and nearly ended up eating a nice mouthful of Forbes dirt.

It's been a while...

Yes, indeed. Apologies for the disappearance of posts. It helps when you finally remember your password. 

Anyway, its time to test a mobile application posting.  Here is former NSWGR 4907, now heralded as MM01, shunting today at Manildra in central western NSW.

This afternoon we arrived at a chilly Forbes to find a lonesome Danish lass called Helga 1432 facing a setting sun. The shot would have been closer if there hadn't been billy goats in the intervening paddock.

So that is the first post for 6 months or so. If I can remember my password, it won't be the last for 2013, hopefully!

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.

Nurail travels Part 2

On 12 November I started a recount of a two-week odyssey on NSW railways in the depths of winter in June 1988, using a Nu-rail pass. Part 1 of that story covered the first five days of the tour, which resulted in trips to Cooma, Dubbo and Broken Hill.

After these strenuous travels, we took Sunday 19 June 1988 off – after all, it is supposedly the day of rest.  However, we did rendezvous that evening for 9:55pm departure from Sydney in car 1 of N7 North Mail, which was composed by 8625, our MCS, MCS, BAM, BAM, MCS and an LHO guards van. I have no idea why we didn’t book a sleeper that night. It was a rough, cold, noisy and thoroughly unpleasant trip.  I am still in therapy and physiotherapy from it, decades later.

Somehow the 44 which had replaced the 86 at Broadmeadow was gone by the morning – presumably at Werris Creek and replaced by double 48s at that junction.  It was Moree a bit after 9:30am when we ventured out for a shot at the station of the two steeds - 4885 and 48100.

 

Then we left the rails to head east at 10:15am in R.15N – a mini-road coach which brought us to Inverell by noon.  After three hours of nothing – except photographing the water tank many times, we then joined R.44N road coach to arrive in Grafton in the dark a little before 5:00pm. 

Tuesday 21 June was a planned day of line-side photography, and it started very well with a visit to South Grafton station in time to see 8048 and 4875 head north on a freight.

Things got even better an hour later in clearing weather when 44237 and 48117 trundled by on freight at South Grafton. This train also deserves two photographic commemorations, so here they are.

In what probably wasn’t the smartest tactical move, we decided to walk a couple of miles out of town in the hope of picking up a few freighters on some of those delicious reverse curves which surround Grafton.  Of course, whilst in transit 44233 roared through with a north bound freight. I managed a poor photo across a vacant allotment.

Then, naturally, nothing came through for the next four or so hours!

It wasn’t until late-afternoon that we returned to the station, where we found 4458 readying for the evening trip south on N6 North Coast Overnight Express.  Apart from the 44 class, the express was composed by a five car set and a FAM sleeper.  

I don’t recall much of that trip, except that 8645 replaced the 44 class at Broadmeadow for the final part of the journey. 

Arrival in Sydney at 5:35am gave the old bloke a chance to return to the South Coast in time for a breakfast arrival.  I decided to take my breakfast on the nearest XPT I could find – it being NT23 Northern Tablelands XPT, which left Sydney at 8:50am.

An on time arrival at Tamworth just before 3:00pm allowed me plenty of time to snap the steeds responsible for the journey, and then to look around.  

I do recall the increasing cold from about 4:30pm, which forced me into the local hostelries for warmth and sustenance. By the time that I left Tamworth just after 10pm on (N8) Up North Mail the temperature was at least five below.  Up front was another trusty Alco – 4465 – with a BAM, MCS, FS and LHY in the consist.   

Sensibly I had paid a small premium, which got me berth 13 in the BAM sleeper.  In fact, if I recall correctly, it was my personal carriage that evening.  Perhaps the lack of passengers – or the knowledge of what lay ahead – led the guard to offer me four or five blankets for the berth. They were received gratefully, and put to good purpose throughout.

I woke just as we were arriving into Sydney at 6:30am on Thursday 23 June, with 8626 at the head of the train.  And I think I’ll leave it there, as part 3 can cover the last two great trips.