Monday Morning Photo. 05/03/2012.

G'day all, when I was a young man [a teenage railfan] I would have thought that harking back 50 odd years was attempting to penetrate the mists of time!...........but now it seems like just turning back a few pages to refresh the memory.

 

 Unfortunately some of those pages are missing or torn or perhaps just a little bit smudged. Attached are a couple that aren't.

 

Peterborough, South Australia again, 1962-63. Google Earth was unimaginable back then but it is worth a look now, the basic shape of the 1960s railway establishment can still be seen and the Roundhouse still stands as a homage to the railway and the town it once served and was served by.  An aerial photo taken in the '60s would have been mostly smoke haze.

 

I've decided to put up two photos this week, partly because I've been absent for a while and partly just because.

 

 The mines at Broken Hill, just over the border in New South Wales, shipped their lead ore west to the smelters at Port Pirie via the South Australian Railways Peterborough Division. The 400 class Beyer Garratts did much of the work but the mines shut down for a few weeks over the Christmas-New Year period every year and the Garratts got a bit of a break and the Division went quiet.

 

408,402,409, 405 and 403 are taking it easy over the break. That's half the Garratt fleet, the other half must have been out on the track.

 

The other pic shows 402 on the table and only a couple of T class 4-8-0s lurking smokebox first in the shed. That's what you would have expected to see back then, 48 or maybe 49 weeks of the year.

 

Best regards,

 

Peter Bruce

 

Monday Morning Photo, 13/02/2012.

G'day all, I'm not 100% sure exactly when I got the attached shot, it was either late in the winter of 1962 or late-ish in January 1963 and I'm also not at all sure that the leading loco is T226 but at this remove it doesn't really matter much. Either way I hadn't reached my 19th birthday and I was camping in the Waiting Room at the Peterborough station and there was no place I would rather have been.

 

Going by this photo and also by my last posting I wasn't wasting the dark hours sleeping, there was just too much going on, the yard at Peterborough never slept and Train Control very obligingly announced trains as they reported at the station before and in daylight hours that gave me plenty of time to walk out beyond the yard limits for a photo.

 

Cliff Olds, who is a member of this mailing list, worked at Peterborough in steam days and he has pointed out that trains would arrive at Peterborough behind a Garratt at 900 tons and the train would then be built up to 1100 tons and depart doubleheaded by the Garratt assisted by a T class 4-8-0, a class much modified since its debut 60 years previously. The westbound train in the picture is one such, the T will come off at Belalie North and the Garratt will work the load through to the lead smelters at Port Pirie.

 

The picture itself is pretty heavily cropped from a 6x6 negative and technically very ordinary, too bad, no apologies.....to me it is Peterborough and its night time sights, sounds and smells.

 

As I've said before, I don't yearn for the Good Old Days but I'm sure glad I saw them.

 

Best regards,

 

Peter Bruce.

 

See http://teenagerailfan.blogspot.com for postings back to 2008 and some repetition!

A Correction.

Peterborough always confuses me, 404 is actually heading east, towards Broken Hill.

 

Regards,

 

Peter Bruce.

Monday Morning Photo. 30/01/2011.

G'day all, hopefully my mailing list problem is solved.

 

Apropos of recent Friday Afternoon Photos posted by Bob Wilson and contributions by Cliff Olds and others I thought the attached photo of 404 might be of interest. The late Ray Graf and I called at Peterborough during January 1963 on our way back from the Eyre Peninsula and found the 400 class Garratts and the ore wagons for the Broken Hill-Port Pirie traffic had all been converted to auto couplers.

 

404 is at the west end of Peterborough yard preparing to depart for Port Pirie and the lead smelter. In the shadows at the left of the picture is the railcar shed and the scene is lit by the brilliant light towers at either end of the yard.

 

I was in Peterborough recently, it was a railway town for about 100 years.......now it's just a town that the trains pass through and whistle for the two level crossings. Many of the townspeople have no memory of what it once was and most of the trains are road trains. I'm very grateful that I saw it in its pomp. I wish I could do it again.

 

Regards,

 

Peter Bruce.

 

All previous postings are at http://teenagerailfan.blogspot.com

 

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Re: New Years Morning Photo. 01/01/2012.

G'day all, I received the following from Bendigo resident and motorman Mick McGowan.......so the pub would the White Horse Hotel. It's a bit embarrassing to have made the same mistake twice so by way of penance I've attached another photo, similar location but taken at ground level.

Regards,

Peter Bruce.

A correction – the image depicts California Gully – not Long Gully.  See my reply to your post on TDU dated 9^th March 2004 at the following link - http://tdu.to/15541.msg?sid=64580.

What you appear to have done is turned 180 degrees at the same vantage point and captured the image of maximum traction #5 passing through California Gully on its way to Long Gully and from there to Bendigo and Quarry Hill.

Cheers.

Mick.

Re: Monday Morning Photo. Wednesday 14/12/2011.

G'day all, a few days after I posted the Monday Morning Photo for 14/12/2011 Chris Wurr went out and shot the attached photo which I have resized and compressed. Apologies for the time taken to pass it on.

Thanks Chris,

Regards,

Peter Bruce.

G'day Peter,

Here's a comparative shot to this weeks photo.
You were standing on a mullock heap on the slopes of Windmill Hill.
The bogie car has just passed theManchester Arms Hotel [still trading] and is coming past St. Matthew's CofE on the corner of Creeth St.
In a few moments it willpass the Rose of Australia Hotel, which is also still trading.
With the tree growth in the foregroundit took a while to find the exact spot you were standing.
Note the communication tower on Mickey Mouse Hill has been joined by another.
The house in centre foreground of mine is the same house bottom left in your's.


Cheers from Chris in Bendigo.