I've realised that there has been a substantial re-organisation of the railway at Townsville, the original station has been abandoned by the looks of things on Google maps so it is a bit hard to imagine what the layout was back in '64.
My guess is that GE diesel 1302 is heading west with those early freight containers behind the loco but perhaps someone can correct me if I'm wrong.
I think that the Great Northern Railway railmotor was somewhere near the old station, it seemed not to have turned a wheel for quite some time. Every railmotor I saw in Queensland during this trip seemed to be different. Can anyone enlighten us about this elderly luxury chariot? It looks like the Northern Division's breakdown crane is in the background of the earlier pic of 1302.
We were in Townsville on a Sunday so the joint wasn't really jumpin', I think 1302's train was the only movement we saw between the departure of the northbound "Sunlander" and whatever slow roadside goods it was that we left town on...... later that night I think it was, it would have been our sleeping accomodation anyway.
I'm going to have to do some serious recollecting about the trip north to Cairns, I know we took in a sugar mill or two and I know that at either Ingham or Innisfail we were bailed up by a zealous guard who demanded that we pay for the privilege of riding his particular length of the old QGR, most unreasonable! We couldn't really complain though, we probably only paid for 150-200 miles of the 1043 from Brisbane to Cairns and probably less on the return. I'm using the 1962 Timetables so I'll leave it to the readers to do the metric conversion. According to this timetable it would have cost us 253 shillings for a return 2nd class fare Brisbane-Cairns, $25.30. No wonder we tried to avoid paying!!
Cliff Olds, I've really enjoyed the account and photos of your Nullabor saga.
Regards to all,
Peter Bruce.
All postings can be found at http://teenagerailfan.blogger.com
1 comment:
Wow! love the railbus/car!
cheers
Nick
NSWGR
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