Google " Luna Park Melbourne ". This is where I saw the “Split Enz”.
you can google them too, and see what I was into in’80. There was a music scene going on at the time, and I was into it. Saw the " Police" in Melbourne, too. It was a fun place !
Also, the train outside of Cairns is the " Kuranda Scenic Railway "
and, it is very scenic. Check out the images ( on google )
I’ve made some posts on the big American Flyer thread, some regarding English AF models.
I myself have a collection of Chinese made British OO from about 1980 onward. These are branded Airfix, Mainline, Replica (and more recently Hornby and Bachmann Branch Line). There have been astonishing improvements in the models since 1980 but the Mainline models of that period were really good for the time. I was sucked in by the replica “non smoking” and “first class” decals on the coach windows. These days you can read them.
In a weak moment I purchased a 1990 replica Lionel 700E Hudson and the Lionel scale S-2 Turbine (so as not to offend NYC or PPR fans).
Peter
I don’t normally post photos to the web.
I haven’t fully adjusted from taking film, I guess.
There are a few photos and videos of the day linked here:
https://www.railpage.com.au/f-p2080637.htm#2080637
I’ll see whether I can do anything with my shots.
The group “Split Enz” were originally from New Zealand, as were a number of groups in Australia at that time. The name was a play on words “split (left) New Zealand” and the fact that many musicians of the time had long hair…
Peter
Peter, I know the Airfix name well, not for trains, but I built a hell of a lot of their model aircraft years back! More years back then I care to remember. Here’s a clue, their World War One fighter kits cost 75 cents here in the US at the time!
When I look at aircraft model kits now and the prices I have heart attacks!
Wayne
Of couse I built some of the early Airfix aircraft models. The Fairey Gannet is one of those I recall. The Royal Australian Navy had a couple of squadrons of those. they had Armstrong Siddely Double Mamba turbines, two turbines side by side driving (separately) contrarotating propellers. What could possibly go wrong?
Airfix made some quite nice plastic kits of freight wagons (British OO of course) in the early 1960s. There was a nice tank wagon moulded in black that looked really good. It ran as well as the TriAng equivalent. It was too light and the tank was too high to ballast effectively. It had X2F couplers, pretty non-standard for the UK.
The Chinese made trains came out in the late 1970s and were known as “Great Model Railways” if not at first. Both Airfix and their competitor Mainline came out with a rebuilt “Royal Scot” which polls had indicated was the most wanted model not in production. They also made a GWR Castle, which Horby Dublo had made years earlier. I have one of their “Pendennis Castle” models. It is in BR colours, not GWR, as the loco was in Australia, but the difference is pretty subtle, the position of the front number and the lining on the cab side, apart from the logo.
Hornby obtained those moulds, and I have two more Castles from them with better paintwork, but I’m keeping the Airfix example.
Peter
Thank you so much ! Those videos are great ! There are so many, I’ve only scratched the surface. I saw the NM25, and then got stuck on the 38’s for awhile.
Still working my way through Garratt 6029 videos.
What a beautiful machine. We never had any Garratts, but it’s a cool design, and makes sense to spread the weight like that. They worked in many countries around the world.
Different locomotive designers came up with alternate concepts to tackle the same problems. An example would be Shay, Climax, and Heisler in the logging world. They each put a different spin on the concept.
6029 is a very lucky locomotive as the last of its type in working order. It was working in the late 1970s, having been taken out of service in 1973 and it was selected for a new National Museum. The Museum took years to set up and it passed to a preservation group that used it until the boiler needed repairs. I was taking photos of it in 1980 when a main steam pipe failed inside the smokebox. The last photo shoewed white steam instead of grey smoke. It was much more noticeable in the cab which filled up with steam. That was fixed quickly but the boiler needed work and it only got running again a couple of years ago.
It is literally polished with car wax and looks amazing. Sadly the owning organisation went broke and the 6029 is in need of a home. It is safe, only suitable organisations can bid for it.
The design is based on a locomotive sold to Iran in 1938. This was replaced by Alco RSD-1s during WWII.
Peter
Thank you for that background information !
She’s real Beauty !
I very much enjoyed the videos of the 38’s, too !
Also, I saw on one of the videos that 6029 is a Beyer Peacock machine from '54. This would make it a relatively new machine in the world of steam engines. I saw the Pennsylvania 1361 in York, and she was already 70 years old when I was there in '88!
One more thing :
I’m going through your video link. There’s one that came up with double headed 38’s, running parallel to double headed VR class R hudsons.
It doesn’t get any better than that !
Wow, what a great thread - I’m enjoying the photos and videos and learning more about these engines and lines. Peter and Paul, thank you very much! Like Penny, I was intrigued by Australian railways after seeing that show on PBS years ago.
This reminds me of my own toy-train-related regret - passing on some locally made O gauge engines whilst browsing hobby shops in Hong Kong and Kowloon back in 2001.
Isn’t that amazing? Many brands overseas that are not carried in the U.S. You never know what you’ll find !
I found this by chance tonight…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePpG4tVHSMQ
Taken exactly 49 years ago (assuming I got the link right)
The double Garratts climbing from Newstan colliery at Fassifern at about 10:00 minutes in is as serious as steam power got in Australia.
I visited there about then and have similar still photos.
The photos at Thornton show the coal trains with 2-8-0s hauling wooden hopper wagons of ten tons capacity without air brakes, on tracks installed in 1915 to separate these slow trains from faster passenger and freight trains.
The tracks are still there, still dedicated to coal trains, but these have three 4400HP AC diesel locomotives and eighty wagons with ECP braking each carrying 100 tons.
The double 38 class running alongside double R class was in Easter 2000. At the last minute I was called to Melbourne for a meeting on Maundy Thursday, and was able to catch a train to Wangaratta and follow the trains with a friend who drove south from Albury.
The valve gear of the leading 38 class, 3801, failed at Seymour, about 70 miles from Melbourne and it all became very complicated.
Peter
Those Garratts are fascinating machines. Watching them in tandem is twice as fascinating! [:D] Thanks for the link! [Y][:D]
Quite apart from it being exactly 49 years ago, I have been to every location in the video. Sometimes at that time, often much more recently. This is really good quality amateur footage. I suspect that sound would have to have been recorded separately and dubbed in later. I think this was taken with German or Swiss 16mm movie cameras. Colour was of course available but cost more and might have had lower resolution.
But the video shows where much of my long lost youth was wasted.
Peter
That is fantastic footage ! Thank you again ! The Garratts are enormous, and look to be 4-8-4+4-8-4. I have books, but I really enjoy seeing them in action, and to hear the whistles. I like 38’s distinctive whistle. Some railroads used a chime whistle, but that single note has a sense of urgency. Pennsylvania K-4’s blow a single note, and it sounds like " get the heck out of my way - now "! I hear that urgency with the 38’s.
I have a question about the coal wagons : do the letters on the sides ( A, B,CC) refer to lump sizes or grades of coal? Just wondering what that signifies.
Funny story: so I came back from Australia in '80 with a suitcase full of records, bands not heard in the U.S. I really thought I had something unique, and special.Oh, and there were a few train books in there, too.Now, 37 years later, I could care less about the records( even if I had a means to play them), but the train books are like gold !
Here’s what I brought back:
Steam Maryborough
Autralian Steam, by A.E. Durrant
Australian Preservation of Narrow Gauge Railways, by Roger Sallis
Along the Line in Western Australia
To Cessnock and Beyond, by Bob Driver ( about the South Maitland Railway) this book reminds me of the operations in your video link
also brought back railway magazines
I like all things railroading, and this is the Australian corner of my book collection, and I’m sure I could never find them here.
I have a question about the coal wagons : do the letters on the sides ( A, B,CC) refer to lump sizes or grades of coal? Just wondering what that signifies.
The wagons were privately owned by the collieries and the letters are abbreviations of the colliery or the owning company names.
I think “A” was Abermain Seaham Colliery, “B” stood for J & A Brown, the operator of one of the two large private railways and later part of Coal and Allied Industries. I think CC stood for “Cessnock Colliery” but I’m not sure of that one. Originally all the wagons in a train would have belonged to a single colliery but by 1968 mergers and takeovers meant that many of the collieries had a single ownership and the wagons were used interchangeably.
I have Durrant’s “Australian Steam”. It was the first book to illustrate steam locomotives of the Midland Railway of Western Australia. I met Durrant. He spent a number of years in Australia before returning to South Africa. He wrote a fairly complete book on Garratt locomotives.
Many of the songs of the 1980s by Australian artists are regarded as classics in Australia at least.
There is a 1951 set of instructions for coal traffic in the Newcastle area which can be found at
http://coalstonewcastle.com.au/appendix/003/document/
although this is excruciatingly detailed.
Peter
Peter, thank you for your explanation of the " Alphabet " coal wagons. I am looking at my book on the South Maitland Railway. It also shows these lettered coal wagons, but no explanation is given. So I appreciate the info. There is a caption referring to a train with coal wagons that contain" best", and “small” coal, so two different grades. I know that over here they do separate coal by customer requirements. Power plants may prefer smaller pieces that can be blown into a furnace. And huge chunks? I recall watching the man fire the " Earnslaw", the lake steamer out of Queenstown on New Zealand’s South Island. The man was using a hammer to break down massive chunks of coal to stoke Earnslaw’s double boilers. So, different sizes and grades of coal are available, but lettering for the various collieries never occurred to me ! Makes sense, though !
On Australian music of the '80’s, it was wonderful! So much so that I packed a suitcase with records to take home. But, it was Of That Time. Tastes change,styles change, and people change. I was making the point that the records held the most value to me Then, the train books hold the most value to me Now. Never saw that coming!
These books are priceless, at least to me !
Paul,
I’ve found another video, from the same cameraman, but with significantly lower technical quality. However, it includes a trip in the cab of the second Garratt of a double headed coal train from the Newstan Colliery to the wharves at Port Waratah, including dropping the first Garratt at Broadmeadow and the second locomotive returning to Broadmeadow loco depot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-Vj0E0GODc
It starts at Gosford, then the end of electrification, and includes a ride on the passenger train from Gosford to Fassifern. If you can overlook the technical quality, the content is amazing (at least, to someone familiar with the area today). If it is too hard to watch, I apologise in advance.
Peter
Peter,
there are no train videos that are too hard to watch ! They just don’t exist ! Especially when it comes to steam.Once again, I appreciate it very much !
This operation looks very similar to the Norfolk and Western here stateside. Lugging heavy coal trains with mammoth steamers, down to tidewater for shipment. If you are not familiar with N&W, they were a coal hauling railroad, and built many of their massive engines. They had 2-8-8-2’s, and 2-6-6-4’s, and kept steam way beyond most other roads.
Now, I love semaphores, and I see many in this clip. I have semaphore pictures in Western Australia, and Queensland, but that was 35 to 37 years ago. Have all the semaphores been replaced, or are there still places a railfan might be able to work one into a picture ? Time marches on, so things I remember may have changed drastically.
Another thing I wanted to mention: I went back to your link from the Centennial Event, and they keep posting more stuff. There was a silent film from the completion on the last 1000 miles, showing Camels, and giant stacks of ties ( sleepers). It was really interesting, and it highlighted the importance of this event. I really enjoyed it.
Once again , Thank You ! It’s funny how much time you can spend on videos, and with You Tube, they just keep queuing up !
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zV8rA3UE-lc&ebc=ANyPxKq_kfEN0lvGUHZXq59L4KJGDxvyIdUUnHt-om9Y06xc2vqSeZNZy04FH3ZxU5nk7lEQ9YSHfIxovYE4F3v55cf6qGBF3QLet me try to share this link…
This is the N&W stuff I spoke of.
Watched the “Steam in Darling Harbour” video last night, it was great! All the NFSA videos are top notch. Just finding the time…