Model Trains and Things

The Government railways and the west coast narrow gauge lines weren’t the only interesting railways in Tasmania. The Emu Bay Railway was an amazing private line that was built from Burnie across to the west coast to haul ore out of that bleak and inhospitable region.

And that’s what it did for many years using an interesting variety of steam locomotives including Australian Standard Garratts that came after the war and several ‘stock’ Beyer Garratts that come from England in 1930 and were still in service 30 years later.

But once the economies that came with dieselization were apparent the writing was on the wall for steam on the Emu Bay Railway and in 1963 the first of four diesel hydraulic locos arrived from Walkers in Queensland. Walkers built the first three locos and 1004 was built by the Tasmanian Government Railway workshops three years later.

These became the 10 class and served the Emu Bay Railway for many years. Here is an official photograph of 1004 taken around the time it entered service.

Photo used with the permission of the National Archives

These locos were rated at 700hp/520kW and served the Emu Bay Railway for many years before being placed in storage in mid-2000. In later years these locos were fitted with auto couplers and multiple unit connections and could often be seen spliced between the Emu Bay Railway’s 11 class diesel hydraulics.

1004 was subsequently sold to the Zig Zag Railway in New South Wales and the other three in the class have also been preserved.

In 1998 the Emu Bay Railway was sold to ATN-Tasrail which was subsequently bought by Pacific National and today the line from Burnie down to the west coast is still in use. It rarely makes the news but it did last week when a derailment saw 10 loaded ore wagons derail and end up in and near a river.

If you’re interested in reading more about the Emu Bay Railway then look for Lou Rae’s book – The Emu Bay Railway – it’s a fascinating read and full of some wonderful photos.

I thought that this week we might spend some time down in Tasmania. I visited there with the kids and my first wife in the early 1990s and then went back to live there in 1996 – before finally heading to Queensland to get warm in 2004.

Tasmania was definitely a place of contrasts and that was certainly obvious when it came to the railways down there. Some of the most unusual steam locos in Australia ran in Tasmania on both the mainline and the 2′ gauge tramways. They were one of the first states to introduce diesel locomotives; they were one of the first states to introduce 2000 hp mainline locos and yet they persisted with vacuum brakes, couldn’t make a profit and quickly gave up their railways to the Commonwealth when the Federal Government offered to take over.

And it was after the Commonwealth took over that the face of Tasmanian railways  really began to change. Locos from Queensland and South Australia were brought in to ease a shortage of locomotives that had been allowed to develop.

Among the first foreigners to to arrive from the north were the 45 members of the Queensland Railways 1300 class. These English Electric locos originally entered service in 1967 and were rated at 1795 hp. While all the locos were shipped to Tasmania not all entered service but those that did were reclassified as the ZC class.

Here is ZC41 laying over at Hobart in the early 1990s.

These locos had some interesting travels over the years. They went from Queensland to Tasmania and from there some moved on to Africa, Malaysia  and South Australia while others were scrapped and a few more were left in service in Tassie.

The locos that went to South Australia were rebuilt into the MKA class and ran on BHP’s iron ore lines in that state. Some of those that went to Africa and Malaysia came back to Australia where they too were rebuilt into the MKA class and sold to Pacific National for use in Queensland – where they were universally disliked and spent quite some time in storage at Gympie – and now three of them are back in Tasmania.

Contrast the above photo with this one of ZC32 in a rather sad and sorry state at Don River. This loco was originally going to be shipped to Western Australia but the deal for this and two of its sisters fell through.

You’ll find more photos of the ZC class and a short movie clip of them in action on this page of the Tasmanian Railway Index.

This is the story of a diesel that just refuses to go away. They were originally built as part of a batch of 20 by Malcolm Moore for a dam construction project in Victoria to a gauge of 3′. By the time the project was finished many of them looked like this:

Photo courtesy of the National Archives

The Tasmanian Government Railways bought eight of them when the dam project was completed and rebuilt six of them to 3′ 6″ gauge and two to metre gauge. The metre gauge locos went to Thailand as aid under the Colombo Plan and the other six were put into service in various small yards around Tasmania.

By 1981 all but one of the six U class had been written off. U3 remained in service as the shunter at Launceston loco depot but by 1990 it had been taken off the books and in August of that year it was placed on display in a Launceston Park.

Of the six rebuilt locos two have now been scrapped and four have been preserved. Two have been preserved in operating condition and U6 is one of those. Here you see it sitting on the turntable at the Don River Railway in 1996.

It’s around 50 years old and it’s hard to believe that this loco once looked like the the worn out pile of junk in the top photo but these little locos just don’t want to go away.

You’ll find a plan of the TGR U Class by following the link.

Even though we spent seven years in Tasmania I took very few railway photos while I was down there. However there are several well-known Tassie railway photographers who have some great work available on the Web.

But there’s also a lesser-known photographer who has some great shots on the Web for you to see. His name is Jeff Grenfell and you can find his work here