Model Trains and Things

It’s a Sunday in 1968 or 1969 and we’re standing on the road bridge that spans the railway cutting between Berala and Regents Park. The line is closed for track maintenance and there’s a perway gang had at work.

This interesting piece of machinery and the men around it were just some of the team that was working between Berala and Regents Park that day.

I’m not quite sure what the machine did but it sure did make a lot of noise

I came across the same machine a few years later stowed in a siding at Yerrinbool but there was too much shade to get a decent photograph that day.

Yesterday I posted a couple of photos of railway maintenance vehicles from NSW and here are two more.

This is a photo that I must have looked at hundreds of times over the years and I thought it was one I had taken at the down end of Bathurst yard … I must admit I hadn’t looked too closely at what was on the other side of the tracks or I would have realised that it was nothing like Bathurst.

When I pulled it out of the album to scan it I found that it was actually taken at Cootamundra on the 5th of January 1991 and if the handwriting on the back of the photo is anything to go by it was taken by Lawrence Ryan … not me.

Well moving right along … here’s another maintenance vehicle and this one I knew was taken by Lawrence.

The photo is undated but it was taken in the yard at Clyde. You’ll notice a rail-mounted bus tucked in behind SRS141. While the photo was undated it was probably taken somewhere between 1990 and 1994.

Over on Railpage Australia there’s been a discussion going on about opening the old Picton Loop line to feed commuter traffic down to connect with the mainline. It was started when one member posted a photo of the Rail Evaluation Car - RVX4 - taken at Buxton recently.

It seems that the car couldn’t get over the entire loop line due to vegetation and no one is really planning on reopening the Loop Line for commuter traffic.

Here’s a photo of RVX4 taken in Orange back in September 1989 by Bob Old. The brick building in the background was the Orange District Superintendent’s office … I’m sure that’s a position that’s no longer in existence.

Here’s a similar vehicle that I photographed behind the old Lithgow Railway Station some time around 1977 or early 1978.