It’s hard to believe but there are mainline locos that are over 50 years old and still putting in some heavy haulage on Australian mainlines. The survivors of the old Victorian Railways B class are examples of those locos with the first of the class being introduced in 1952.
Originally built for broad gauge work within Australia these EMD locos were built in Australia by Clyde and were based on EMD’s famous F diesel design. The Bs differed from the standard F body by having cabs at either end of the loco.
Today the Bs are running on the standard gauge and have travelled well beyond the Victorian border. Here we see three of the class teamed up with an S class loco moving a spoil train through Hawkesbury River.
Turn up the volume and listen to these old locos roar!
The Australian Railroad Group … aka ARG … has ceased operations in NSW. At time, if you lived any of the eastern states of Australia the ARG played a major role in your diet despite the fact that you may have never even seen one of their locos.
ARG’s impact on your diet was due to their involvement with the Manildra Group … the biggest provider of flour in Australia. Wherever the Manildra Group had a factory in New South Wales the ARG would be there bringing in the raw materials and hauling out the finished products.
But now ARG has lost the Manildra Group’s contract and the last ARG train ran on November 22. With nothing to haul on this side of the continent ARG are returning their 31/L class and a number of their 22 class diesels to Western Australia. Other members of the 22 class will be used by QRNational but sadly the L class have left the east coast.
Fortunately for us east coasters they’re still around on YouTube and here’s one clip that really highlights the beautiful sound of an L/31 class diesel hard at work.
When I finished the School Certificate at the end of 1966 I had a few months off before I started work with the old Postmaster General’s Department in 1967 so my parents suggested that I head up to Coonabarabran in the north-west of New South Wales to work on my uncle’s farm up there. For a kid who had hardly been out of the city it was an interesting time.
The fact that my uncle’s farm was within easy walking distance of the railway station made it even more interesting. At that time there was a daily (except Sunday) mail train in both directions - an extension of the Mudgee Mail - and a goods train that ran at least three times a week as far as I know.
I took quite a few photos at the railway station while I was there but most of them have either been lost or were of such poor quality I now wonder why I ever kept them. However here are two photos that are worth looking at from interesting summer back in 1966/67.
The first photo shows a C30T shunting the yard
The second shows a damaged C30T (note the damage to the front of the cylinder) that had collided with a vehicle on the level crossing on the down side of the yard. (Coonabarabran wasn’t the end of the line and most trains continued on to Gwabegar)
The collision happened before I arrived in Coonabarabran and from memory the loco was left stowed on the siding for quite some time. I’m not sure when the loco was finally moved from Coonabarabran but I have a suspicion that it was withdrawn from service after the accident and never steamed again.
And just to try and explain the class coding for these locomotives. The New South Wales Government Railways rebuilt a number of suburban C30 class tank locomotives into branch-line tender locomotives when the Sydney suburban network was electrified. The department decided to keep the basic code for the loco but added a suffix of ‘T’ to signify ‘tender’.
An interesting thread over on Railpage.com.au about a tour back in 1973 behind 3203 and 3830 - a tour that I was on - has moved on to begin talking about a tour down the south coast behind 5593. There’s a good photo of 5593 and it’s unusual southern valve gear included in that thread.
That’s not a tour that I went on but I did get to travel down to Kiama on another tour with 5597. I’m not sure of the date but it had to have been around 1966 or 1967. As far as I remember the camera I took with me that day was my fathers old Kodak camera complete with bellows. It might have been an old camera but it still produced decent photos even if the photographer couldn’t,
Here’s 5597 at Sydney Terminal awaiting departure time;
And I took this photo of the unusual valve gear fitted to the 55 class at Kiama:
These photos are among the earliest photos I ever took so out of all the photos I took that day these ones are the only ones worth showing here.
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.
If you’re building a model railway layout then sooner or later you will realise that you’ve embarked on a massive exercise in problem solving … and sometimes you’re going to struggle to find the answers to some of those problems.
The Wolf Valley RR is one man’s journey into the realm of problem solving and you can join him as he slowly solves his problems and builds his layout. Follow the link and you will find out more about the problems that he’s solved along the way.
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.
We headed off to Bundaberg again yesterday for our regular stationary fix at Office Works. Between Childers and Bundaberg the highway crosses several cane lines at crossings that are well-protected by flashing lights and bells.
Both crossings are on long straight stretches so it’s pretty hard to miss the lights and bells but, as I mentioned here after our last trip to Bundie, there are idiots who do miss them and once again, yesterday was no exception.
We were bopping along with nothing very close behind when the lights at the first crossing out of Childers went off. Toni began to slow as I started rummaging around for my camera … and the lumbering 4WD that was a couple of hundred metres back before we began to slow started to overtake.
Fortunately the driver of said 4WD finally woke up to what those flashing lights and ringing bells really meant and managed to pull up just before he got past us. That meant that instead of photographing a bloody mangled mess - and possibly having the wreckage pushed into our car - I got to grab this photo of Isis Mill Number 5 heading for the mill with a very long rake of loaded cane wagons.
I am now coming to the firm believe that the size of the vehicle that some people drive is in direct inverse proportion to the size of their penis and the size of their brain … both of which are probably so small they would be difficult to find without the help of some visual aids.
