Fw: Monday Arvo Photo. 16/04/2012.

This photo leaves a lot to be desired technically but I've kept coming back to it over the years, the scene and the setting has drawn me back.

Like my memory it is hazy and indistinct but still to me it is full of interest.

The low sun, the long shadows, the distant trees and the dirt road, the track in through the railway fence and the pole line, the fettler's sleeper pile and water tank.

All leading the eye to a steam hauled local goods train on a main line railway.

It is late in the day for the steam locomotive in Australia and getting towards the latter days of the railway as THE common carrier and as a large scale employer of all grades and skills.

Western New South Wales 1964.

Fw: Monday Morning Photo. 19/03/2012.

G'day all, it's Friday 24th of June 1964 and W44 the ore train from the  Broken Hill mines has just arrived at Orange East Fork behind the two 60 class Garratts that have brought it from Molong. I had arrived at Parkes the previous evening and had bedded down in the waiting room at the station trusting myself to wake at 6.00 am in plenty of time to join W44 about 6.30 and ride through Molong to Orange. I expected a single Garratt as far as Molong where it would be joined by a second one for the grades east of that point.

I spent a rather restless night waking every hour but somehow I missed 6.00 am and was woken at 7 o'clock by a little 32 class loco struggling to lift the Peak Hill goods out of the yard so I bolted down to the highway and managed to hitch a ride with an old bloke driving a '48 Ford ute.

We beat the train to Molong, it rolled in shortly after behind a couple of 49 class diesels so I hadn't missed much.

The two diesels came off in a yard full of trains and after quite a bit of to-ing and fro-ing we got two of the big Garratts coupled to the front of the ore train, both bunker first. I thought I'd probably have to ride the van but I managed to get invited up onto the second loco after I got a curt knockback from the blokes on the leading engine.

The full goods load for the section for these two engines was 1000 tons and they had their work cut out for them over an undulating road. The 60s rode fairly smoothly up to about 40 mph but any faster they developed a pretty violent up and down motion, at least our 6042 did.

So here we are at Orange East Fork, the lead engine, 6011, is cutting off and 6042 will take the train on.

East Fork was the yard for through trains to and from the west and also the loco depot. Like the other main lines in New South Wales the West was constantly busy and at this time almost 100% steam as far as Parkes, the ten 49 class GM diesels mostly worked west of there.

I got a lift into town with the engine crew in the driver's Holden EH wagon. I was ravenous by this time but a steak with chips and salad, some bread and butter and a pot of tea soon fixed that.

Regards,

Peter Bruce. 

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

Fw: Monday Morning Photo. 19/03/2012.

G'day all, Cliff was good enough to fill me in on the details of the W44 operation. Thanks Cliff.

Regards,

Peter Bruce.

I received your photo again today, but from another source, which prompted my reply below.

Presuming that you are not fully aware of the Broken Hill - W44 situation, ore on that train was consigned from the Consolidated Zinc Corporation Ltd and the New Broken Hill Consolidated mines in Broken Hill to the Sulphide Corporation's Cockle Creek smelters, about 800 miles to the east and just south of Newcastle N.S.W.   All three companies were owned by the then Conzinc Rio Tinto company, hence the shipment of ore from those two mines only.   Also those two mines were the only ones in Broken Hill connected to the N.S.W. Govt. Railway standard gauge, the unique 700 mile marker (from Sydney) being between the Broken Hill Crystal Street marshalling yard and the Zinc mine.

The other two mines in Broken Hill at that time i.e. North Broken Hill Ltd and Broken Hill South Ltd railed all of their ore on the 3' 6" narrow gauge (Silverton Tramway Co. to the S.A. border, thence South Australian Railways) to the Broken Hill Associated Smelters at Port Pirie in S.A., about 250 miles to the west.   Some ore from ZC Ltd. and NBHC mines also went there.   North B.H. Ltd, B.H. South Ltd., and the Zinc Corp owned third shares in the Port Pirie smelters.   The N.B.H.C. didn't exist when those smelters were built, hence no ownership in them.

My father worked in the Zinc Corp. mill in the 1950's-60's and spent some time on the weighbridge there.   He said that when W44 first started (21st January 1961), hoppers were used however the ore would not readily discharge.   Various degrees of moisture content were tried, the more sloppy consistencies setting like concrete by the time that Cockle Creek was reached.   Consequently gondolas were substituted.   W44 was always diesel hauled from Broken Hill by 49 class diesels since inception, steam taking over east of Parkes.

The Port Pirie smelters still operate but are now owned by Nyrstar.   I went past the site of the Cockle Creek smelters late last year and the whole area seems to have been razed.   Unbelieveable! 

Regards,

Cliff.

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 Garratt will come off at Belalie North and the little T class 4-8-0 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