Over the last couple of years Queensland Railways have been slowly abandoning a number of their cross-country branchlines. In a world where road transport costs are increasing the wisdom of abandoning those branchlines is questionable and in 50 years time the Government of the day could be regretting the short-sightedness of their predecessors.
Here, looming out of the winter fog that was around a couple of weeks ago is Biggenden station located on one of those recently abandoned branchlines. There are some quite large (in Queensland terms) towns along the same line as Biggenden and you have to wonder the difficulties those towns will face without a rail link to the seaboard.
Queensland is a vast state and as late 1960 the railways provided the only all-weather route to many towns. Scattered along the railway lines between the major towns were many small communities that relied almost entirely on the railway for all their transport requirements … even the transport of injured people to the nearest hospital.
That’s an existence that many of us would find it hard to comprehend for we have all-weather roads and ambulances to rush us to hospital if we’re injured. But before those all-weather roads and fast ambulance services all they had were the railways … and the railway ambulances.
The driver’s “cab” of one Queensland Railway ambulance
It’s possible that no two ambulances were the same and this one was built by Norman Parker in the early 1940s. It’s powered by a V Twin J.A.P.otore cycle engine and gearbox. It originally served the Dimbulah and Mt. Mulligan mining districts before being transfered to Gayndah in 1960.
It was presented to the Gayndah Historical Society in 1981 by the Gayndah Q.A.T.B. and it was restored by the Society in 1986 with the help of a Queensland Museum Grant. The rail ambulance is presently on display at the Gayndah Museum along with many other historical vehicles.
The interior of the driver’s “cab” - definitely spartan by today’s standards
The interior of the Gayndah rail ambulance
The 2 cylinder motor cycle engine that powers the rail ambulance
Unfortunately space at the Museum is rather limited the the area where the rail ambulance is displayed is quite cramped and it’s hard to get some decent photos of the front of the vehicle.
Museum staff tell me that the engine is still in working order and they could take it out, put it on the tracks and it run as well as the day it came to Gayndah.
Here’s a link for some better photos and some history of this interesting vehicle.
Back on February 21 I took a run over to Maryborough to have a look at what was out in the open at the EDI/Walkers plant and there I found 8306.
Pacific National will be moving into the Queensland coal transport market … perhaps as soon as the last quarter of this year … and they’re having two classes of electric locomotives built to handle that traffic. Once class is being built in Germany and the 83 class is being built at the EDI plant in Maryborough - the same place that built the PN class diesels for Pacific National.
This photo was taken from a public street … that’s where most of the EDI products receive their finishing touches.
From the EDI plant I headed over to Maryborough West and found two more EDI/Walkers products in the yard there.
The loco nearest the camera is 3532 a rebuild of one of the original classes of electric loco that QR had built when they introduced electrification to the north coast line. 3532 was waiting to head north where it will spend its working life hauling coal trains.
Behind the 35 class is Pacific National’s 8304 and off to the left is a the Maryborough West shunter - a 1720 class that was so decrepit looking that you couldn’t read it’s number from either side or from either end.
About every three months Toni and I have to go to Rockhampton so we drive up and back along the Bruce Highwayand. tThe best part of the trip would have to be the section north of Mount Larcombe right through to Rockhampton because that’s where the Bruce Highway parallels the main north coast railway line.
That’s also the section that was subject to duplication work a few years back so that it could cope with the large number of coal trains coming in from the west and heading down to Gladstone to unload. Queensland Rail runs some very long coal trains along this section and you will nearly always see two locos on the front of the train and one or two locos cut in at about the halfway point in the train.
It’s quite an impressive site to see one of these fully laden coal trains thundering along and I was surprised to read today that Queensland Rail limits the speed of these coal trains to 80km/h. It was surprising because we sure weren’t doing 80km/h when we were trying to keep up with this fully laden train on the last trip
Garratt steam locomotives are fairly well regarded the world over but in every family there has to be a black sheep and for the Garratt family of fine steam locomotives the black sheep has to be what was known as the Australian Standard Garratt.
On paper the Australian Standard Garratt should have been an absolute winner but in fact it was an absolute lemon. The Australian Standard Garratt was built during WWII under the auspices of the Commonwealth Land Transport Board at the Newport Workshops in Melbourne, the Islington Workshops in South Australia, the Midland Workshops in Western Australia and Clyde Engineering in New South Wales.
The first Australian Standard Garratt took a mere four months to build and while they were quick to impress railway staff with their pulling power their design faults soon showed through. The lack of a flange on the leading driving wheels contributed to their habit of derailing and a long list of other faults soon had railway unions calling for industrial action.
The locos saw service in Western Australia, Queensland and Tasmania. In Queensland the Australian Standard Garratts were withdrawn as soon as the War ended and in Western Australia they lasted into the early 1950s and several of the Western Australian engines were then sold to South Australia for crew training to prepare staff for the arrival of the 400 class Garratts
In Tasmania the Australian Standard Garratt was a little more popular and they lasted service until 1957. And that’s where we see this official photograph of one of the Tasmanian Government Railway locos. There’s no mention of just where the photo was taken but, as you can see, even official photographers have trouble with poles and lighting.
Photo used with the permission of the National Archives
A number of Australian Standard Garratts passed into private ownership and the largest private operator of these locomotives was the Emu Bay Railway. They liked the Australian Standard Garratts so much that, when one was wrecked in a derailment, they went out and bought another one as a replacement.
The Emu Bay Railway scrapped their last Australian Standard Garratt around 1966.
Looking back from this point in time it’s perhaps difficult to understand just what a disaster the Australian Standard Garratts really were … especially in Queensland … but perhaps this slide presentation from YouTube will help you understand.
As the Savannahlander says, it’s “a remarkable and unique rail journey into Far North Queensland’s savannah country”
You will find their website here and it’s quite interesting to read of a tourist railway’s struggle to provide a decent service in the face of official bumbling.
The video below shows part of the trip through the Delaney Gorge.
Toni and I spent most of Saturday visiting a new client - a local historical museum - out west and on the way back we stopped for a break at Biggenden where I took some photos of the railway station there.
Those photos are still sitting in the camera so I though I’d start the week with this video taken at the Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers which was on last weekend too. My thanks to Graham R for putting it up on YouTube.
The steam loco is 1079 and there’s some great stack-talk as she gets stuck into the task of hauling the train. Fortunately 1620 - Queensland’s first Heritage Diesel is there too and if you’ve never heard and English Electric diesel in action then you’ll find this video interesting too.
Perhaps the most remote railway line in Australia is the Comalco line at Weipa on Cape York Pennisula. The line is only 19.5km in length but it’s used to haul some heavy loads of bauxite … and other things too.
Unfortunately photos of the line are a little rare but here are two photos taken earlier this year around 2000 - 2001 (see comments below) that I came across on Flickr
Every now and again … and likely to be every month for the for next few months … Toni and I have to drive up to Rockhampton and back in the same day. The highway doesn’t really touch the northern railway line till just after Calliope and from then on the road and the railway line run quite close together right through to Rockhampton.
That part of the northern line is coal country and you really should be able to see plenty of trains but until last Tuesday we had hardly seen a train on the line during our Rockhampton trips. Last Tuesday more than made up for it though and we ended up seeing four coal trains and three freighters.
Unfortunately I only got to photograph one down coalie running back to the mines and I couldn’t get across the level crossing in time to grab a photo of it with the sun behind me. I really only had time to put the handbrake on, dig the camera out from under the seat and turn it on before the train was almost on me.
Leading the train is 4044 with one of the new 41 class in the shafts - further back in the train acting as distributed power was 4032. The last time I’d seen that loco was the year before last when it was under construction at Walkers/EDI at Maryborough.
There was some interesting motive power in Rockhampton yard too but there were too many poles in the way and we didn’t even bother getting out of the car and we just missed a 2200 class on an up work train running down the middle of the street on the northern approach to Rockhampton yard.
We’ll be back in a month so we might do better then.
The crew of a Brisbane bound coal train had a little more excitement than they were expecting on Tuesday night. As the train was passing through Toowoomba the driver noticed smoke coming from one of the units on the train.
Fire crews attended and removed 2358 from the train and extinguised the fire that was burning in the dynamic brake system. The local paper reported that the damage was minor.
2358 originally entered service in September 1979 as 2454 - a 1500hp loco fitted with an EMD 12-645E engine. It was rebuilt as a 2300 class and was back in service in December 2001. The rebuild included the fitting of an EMD 12-645E3C engine that produces 2475hp.
Here’s another member of the 2300 class stabled in Maryborough West yard on 30 December 2007.
