After reading in your newsletter the comments about this talk I’ve been asked to give, not only are they a great compliment, which I appreciate, but also I just hope that it hasn’t conveyed the impression that you may be sitting here for quite some hours, because the effects railways have had on the community over the last 150 years or so are quite wide ranging. I wouldn’t want to even try to inflict all that on you. Thus I’ll ask you to be content with my little selection.

I consider it something of an honour to be asked to talk on this topic tonight, since there are no doubt others who can give such a talk, with the aim of tying it in with the Transportation Display touring the countryside to mark 150 years of railways in Victoria in 2004.

Railway history is a pretty wide topic, and if may I say it, so is that of those of us who delve into it!! Tonight I’ll try to confine myself to what I see as some of the salient features for us here, but firstly I think it could be useful to look at some little-known facts about the evolution of railways as some sort of background to it all..

For us it is difficult to comprehend a time when railways did not exist, although could I suggest that the road lobby and all its constituents have no doubt fondly dreamt of such a time returning one day! In spite of their wishful thinking, that day won’t come, but if it did, it would be returning after a very very long time, because the genesis of railways lies in the mines of 15th century England. Whilst it seems that in some places spasmodic coal extraction took place much earlier, the Historical Manuscripts Commission's report of the time notes that coal mines as such are referred to as early as 1316 where they were being worked on the estates of Sir Francis Willoughby of Wollaton, Nottinghamshire, and that in 1350 the men digging it were paid 1d to 3d per day – a figure set by statute. Before the end of the 15th century “rail ways” were in use there. Probably it is more accurate to call them “wagon ways”, but for our purposes tonight I’ll not dwell on that.

It would seem that the “rail way” concept came into being because a more satisfactory and efficient means of removing the ore body or coal seam, and of course the resultant mullock from these mines, was sought. Up to that time stout wicker baskets called “corves” that women and children dragged or carried to the surface were in use. Apparently a parallel development was also taking place in parts of Europe at the same time.

Installing small wagons running on rails was merely an efficiency measure, and thus resulted in greater output, and in making this change there was no apparent thought of easing the women’s and children’s toil (or should we call it slavery??), because they then had to push the wagons instead. In Germany they called them “hundts” which I suspect indicated what they thought of them!! The story of the incredibly difficult work of women and children in the mines of England, and no doubt in other parts of Europe, where they initially worked as family units, with the man hewing the coal, and his wife and children getting it to the surface, is a sad and disturbing one for us looking at it through 21st century eyes.

As a matter of interest, the weight of the "coales" was then calculated in chaldrons; largely because this was the name of the wagons that conveyed the coal on these wooden tramways, and they held 5 to 6 tons. Clearly a day's work was calculated on the number of these they managed to fill. Surprisingly, an example of a chaldron, and the rails it ran on, as well as the “hundts” described above, are on display at the magnificent National Railway Museum in York (Northern England), although where they would have found these in this day and age is a good question.

Then (apparently at the invitation of the canal proprietors) these wooden “rail ways” were extended to the canals (& rivers). The first authoritative record is from 1602, when a Mr Beaumont laid a wooden tramway from the Newcastle Collieries to the River Tyne. Of course this doesn’t mean that others had not done so previously – it’s just they haven’t been documented.

Wooden rails (or to be pedantic, wooden beams used as rails) continued to be in use for another 100 years, when “real” rails of iron or steel began to appear.

It is easy to assume the railway format of flanged wheel on steel rail that we take for granted today has always been so, but in 1912 Dr H.C.Mais wrote a treatize on the evolution of rails, which is a study in itself, and he demonstrated that a number of curious systems and rail types have been tried over time. A pivotal point was the advent of the steam locomotive, the weight of which caused many of the rails of the time to either snap because they were cast iron, sink into the dirt due to lack of ballast, or just collapse

The logical progression from this was to extend these lines of rails to places not served by the rivers and canals, until they ultimately displaced barges as a bulk transport mode, and their present role of conveying the product direct from the mine to their particular market began. However, like the present iron ore railways of the Pilbara region of W.A., these were all private railways, built merely for the purposes of those who operated them, and were not available to the public.

And this continues today. Many look at railways as primarily people movers, the which they are very efficient at; but in reality from the start and throughout the ages, cartage of all manner of goods is their major role, and in fact the only one that enables railways to make any sort of return on monies invested. Thus to put passenger services in proper context, they are largely a public service, because for a number of reasons few, if any of them around the world, do little more than cover costs.

.The first public railway was the Swansea – Mumbles Railway in England, which began carrying passengers in 1807, using horse traction. Ironically, horse buses plying the same route completely stole all their passengers, and they were forced to close in 1826: no doubt the first instance of a railway succumbing to competition from road transport! However, in 1860 the railway was rebuilt and continued to operate for the next 100 years. And since our underlying theme is 150th anniversaries, this railway was the first in the world to celebrate its 150th anniversary; and over that time it had employed 7 different means of traction, one of which was wind power. One wonders whether that was the time they lost all their patrons.

In fact this argument about means of traction goes on today with this 150th anniversary of railways in Victoria, because the South Australians last year claimed they were first with their Goolwa tramway, which was/is horse-drawn. But if we accept that motive power doesn’t count in an entity being described as a railway, then a convict tramway in Tasmania in the 1830’s using manpower wins hands down.
Nowadays we tend to accept that to be considered a true railway, it should be locomotive-hauled or some such. I say the “some such” because clearly railmotors and their ilk are not locomotive hauled – unless they break down of course – but are still legitimate railway items. Hence the general acceptance that the line from Melbourne to Port Melbourne, which incidentally doesn’t exist as such today, was the first railway in Australia.

The first public railway using locomotive power was the Stockton – Darlington railway, which operated just south of Newcastle (England) from September 1825. At first locomotive haulage was confined to goods trains only, with passenger services being horse-drawn, although apparently this arrangement didn’t last long.

Their first class carriages were merely road coaches mounted on railway wheels – no doubt where we get the term “coaching stock” when we refer to the carriages a particular railway owns – whereas the rest of the passengers had to settle for open trucks. Perhaps they had the same problems as the contractors’ trains in South Gippsland, where persons travelling on them often had their clothes catch fire from sparks thrown out by the wood burning locomotives.



The steam locomotive began to appear in England around the turn of the 19th Century, and there was a variety of them built with varying degrees of success. Then in October 1829 it was decided to hold the Rainhill trials at which the various builders could demonstrate their products. From memory three criteria were set for them; these being a) load-hauling ability; 2) speed attainable, and 3) durability – i.e. ability to continue performing over an extended period.

As we know, the winner was Robert & George Stephenson’s “Rocket”, which met all of the above criteria. It is believed that the main attribute to its success was the simplicity of its drive mechanism; where the driving piston was coupled directly to the driving wheels, versus many of the others which had complex systems of rods and levers to get the power from the piston to the wheels instead, so whilst they may have gone faster than the Rocket; or hauled a heavier load, their rods and levers let them down when it came to trouble-free operation over an extended period.

Indeed, whilst the original is long gone, the National Railway Museum at York has two exact replicas of “Rocket”; one (which doesn’t go) for display purposes, and the other (which does go) for exhibitions etc about the countryside. Its big day (actually week) out was the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Rainhill trials in 1979, when railfans from across the world gathered to see it and others run.

Here I must point out that contrary to popular belief the Stephenson brothers were not the first to build a steam locomotive. This title goes to Welshman Richard Trevithick who built one in 1801.

Naturally, having steam locomotives available that could haul loads considerably further, faster, and more efficiently than horse drawn vehicles could ever do, not only provided a huge boost to coal mining operations, but to transport generally about England, then America and Europe, even though there were limitations. For these small contraptions whose boilers were only about the same size as a 44-gallon drum, their major inability was to cope with grades of any sort. They also had a bit of trouble staying on the track if confronted with a sharp curve. Hence the proliferation of the spectacular railway viaducts in England, largely built to avoid these.

Thus, even as late as the 1850's where there was a gradient steeper than 1 in 75, they installed a number of mine-type rope haulages on English main lines, where the trains were hauled to the top of the grade. And this wasn’t due to the weight of the carriages, because until around 1860 all shunting was done by station porters who just pushed the carriages & wagons to wherever they were needed about the yard. They didn’t even need horses.

To their credit, the American locomotive builders solved these problems by introducing a leading pony truck or bogie on their more powerful locomotives, and indeed several were imported into England for use on these (so-called) steep grades where they had been using rope haulages, somewhat to the chagrin of Robert & George Stephenson and their friends, I suspect.

And yet, 45 years later all of the Korumburra coal lines had 1 in 40 grades against the load, and in some cases, 1 in 30, with 8-chain curves as well: figures we would not even associate with broad-gauge railways normally, and all worked with little coffee-pot steam locomotives, so when it's all said and done, we colonials didn't do too badly, even if we had to import the “W” class locomotives from America to do it!!

But let’s pause here to look at some of the social effects of all this, since if nothing else, the title of this talk dictates I should!!

As with the canals before them, the landscape underwent considerable change, particularly in undulating areas of England, where deep cuttings and high embankments and even higher viaducts appeared, some of them still quite spectacular even today, 100 or so years later. Whilst our Australian railways by comparison tend to go up hill and down dale following the contours of the land, largely to keep construction costs down, we in Victoria still have viaducts, starting with the classic English-style one at Malmsbury, and then there are the quite high Taradale, Moorabool and Albion viaducts, all spanning valleys. Trestle bridges do not seem to have been a feature of English railways, whereas here in Australia, and certainly America, where some of their wooden trestle bridges were quite remarkable, many became landmarks, and we have a number in Gippsland, not the least being the one on the old Warragul - Noojee line which is classified by the National Trust.

As well, basically across the world, in towns of any consequence railway yards appeared, and in the larger towns these yards and ancilliary services occupied quite a large area. Towns like Seymour and Hamilton here in Victoria are good examples. Of course, a standard feature of most was the railway crane. As an amusing aside, when British railway engineers of the 1830’s were confronted with providing them, the question of what lifting capacity they should have arose. After some pondering they decided that the heaviest thing likely to be delivered to a town of that period was a church bell, and so for many years, British railway crane sizes were calculated on the weight of a church bell.

Then there were the station buildings themselves. Unlike the stage coach services that generally used city hostelries as their starting out points, railway systems couldn’t really do that, due to the small matter of needing some rails nearby. Hence the proliferation of the new concept, the railway station – or as the Americans and stupid media types call them, train stations – came into being. Thus, eventually across the world the resultant terminal stations of some of the railway systems can only be described as palatial. In England and America this opulence has been attributed to the various railway companies trying to outdo each other, and one writer claims that a number of English railway stations are among the best examples of English architecture of their time; designed by the best available architects.

However, here in Australia (and Europe too, where there are some superb examples) this was not a factor, since the railways were by and large State-owned; and yet the major stations of Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide are no less ornate, although these days not doing quite what they were originally intended for: particularly Adelaide, which is now largely their Casino.

Melbourne (Flinders St) not only has the honour of being Australia’s first railway terminus, but also for many years it had the second longest station platform in the world (No.1 @ 639m), and was one of the busiest in terms of passengers passing through it each day. The building itself was opened in 1908. Today the longest station platform in Australia is East Perth, the terminus of the Indian Pacific, which is about 50m longer than Flinders St No.1.

Even our country towns weren’t left out, with buildings of quite some architectural merit finding themselves located in some unlikely places. Korumburra and Maryborough stations here in Victoria are only two of many.



And this brings us to the next feature of the railway age – the railway town. Here I suppose this term needs to be defined. Some may think that Traralgon is or was a railway town, but I believe the acid test is whether there is anything else the people of that particular town could do if the railway disappeared. We know that here in Traralgon the railways are only one of a group of major employers, whereas in towns such as Ararat or Dimboola, for argument’s sake I doubt that this would be the case, which of course makes them railway towns.

Probably the best examples of these are the small settlements (most named after Prime Ministers) that were strung across the length of the 1057-mile Transcontinental railway between Port Augusta and Kalgoorlie, purely to house those whose job it was to keep the trains running. Cook – Queen City of the Nullarbor as the rather rugged sign at the station proudly proclaims – would be by far the best example of these. It and all the rest of them are now generally deserted, due to changes in railway operating procedures, although passenger trains still stop there for Departmental purposes, as the time-honoured phrase tells us. More useless information is that Cook is about midway along the longest stretch of straight railway in the world – all 297 miles of it.

And whilst speaking of this line, most Australians don’t seem to know that Western Australia’s becoming part of the Australian Commonwealth was dependent on that line being built, because prior to its opening in 1917, the only way to travel between the eastern states and W.A. was by taking a sometimes unpleasant sea voyage. .

Even Port Augusta, which was the centre of Commonwealth Railways’ operations for 65 years; a fact the current railway operator chooses to totally ignore, is now only a shadow of its former self, with its only claim to fame – or should we say infamy – being the nearby detention centre, because it was the ultimate railway town, where there was little else for the people to turn to when all the railway activity that took place there was removed to Adelaide – or just removed. However, in later years a large power station complex has been set up there, using coal railed down from Leigh Creek in S.A.’s north..

There is even a place called Railwaytown. It is on the western side of Broken Hill, and for many years was the operational centre of the Silverton Tramway Company. It was not a tramway, but was in fact the railway that linked Broken Hill with the South Australian border. The company was not permitted to be called a railway under some obscure N.S.W. law. It hauled the train that conveyed all the produce for Broken Hill from Adelaide several times a week, which was locally known by the intriguing name of “The Produce”.



Mind you, this is only one of many curious names locals applied to trains across Australia. Here are some others: Leaping Lena; the Tin Hare, Aunt Emma; Spirit of Salts; the Beetle; the Coffee Pot; the Darky; The Peanut; The Fish; The Chips and Puffing Billy.. I hasten to add that only the three last ones are official names. All of them went from local usage names like those above, to official ones. Puffing Billy’s name actually comes from an English mine locomotive built in 1826, so called because it puffed, when others of that period apparently didn’t. Today it lives in the Science Museum in London, but doesn’t puff any more. More useless information is that 10 horses lost their jobs when it started work. Another one the GSR wouldn’t care to discuss is the Ghan. In its early days it was known as The Afghan Express, and since there were two divisions of it (one stopped everywhere; and the other didn’t) they were known as the Flash Ghan and the Dirty Ghan. I’m not sure whether they ran once a week, or once a fortnight, but I suspect the latter was the case, because in those days Alice Springs was only a town as big as Toongabbie.

Anyway, let’s move on. I’ll leave you to work out where all these trains with curious names ran!

I think I’ve established that the infant railways linked towns and cities as never before, and provided the speed and capacity for conveying goods and passengers previously unknown, so let’s not dwell further on that. However, this linking of all these towns threw up a major problem when it came to casting timetables for these new train services. In the England of the 18th & 19th centuries, and no doubt across Europe too, each large town kept its own time, and so to frame some sort of timetable for a given route was very nearly impossible. As a result, the Governments of the day decided that a uniform time across the country was the only answer, and this came into effect.

In Europe today, barges are being relegated to just carrying cargoes such as sand and gravel for ready-mix concrete depots, because of their ability to carry a large quantity, and nobody much cares how long it takes to deliver it. Trucks now carry nearly everything else. This also happened in England in the 19th Century, and many canals fell into disuse, once the railways became a better alternative.

As a result, some 500 barge horses and their attendants were no longer required, which demonstrates once again that changes in technology don't benefit everyone.

Coupled with this, here as well as in Europe, teamsters and (horse) coach proprietors found they could not compete with the railways, and either had to move further out, as Cobb & Co did, or find another occupation. Indeed here in Victoria, a number of lines were specifically built to divert traffic from the waterways to rail. The Echuca line is the classic example; with the Port Albert line claimed as another.

On the plus side, the new railways brought with them a host of new occupations previously unknown, and so many of these displaced persons were readily absorbed into these new trades.

As well, in all the towns they passed through, whether full-blown railway towns or not, the railways provided considerable employment opportunities, and thus compelling evidence that railways wherever played a very large part in decentralization of people to regional centres across Australia, often enabling them to expand further. Indeed, railways have always been labour intensive, and as Geoffrey Blainey has pointed out, in Australia the various State railway systems as a group in the period up to and including World War Two were Australia’s largest employers.

N.S.W.G.R. was by far the biggest Australian system in every respect, but the Victorian Railways weren’t that far behind, and in the 1970’s was still employing some 25,240 people, and still had 4,300 route miles of 5ft 3in track, along with 200 miles of standard gauge from Wodonga to Melbourne..

By 1970 the VR’s State Mines at Wonthaggi had been closed, along with the associated power station that supplied electricity to the mines and the town; and hot water and heating to the nearby hospital. However, the VR still owned and operated the Mt Buffalo Chalet, along with all the other units needed to efficiently operate a railway system. First and foremost were the main workshops at Newport; and smaller regional ones at Bendigo and Ballarat, which built and maintained their large inventory of locomotives, rolling stock and sundry items. As well they had a large printing works; large laundry; a bakery, and a network of refreshment rooms and kiosks across the State, and marketing services. The printing works produced a large variety of timetables, reports, circulars, booklets, and for people like me, their in-house magazine, the which until the corporatization bug hit them was a valuable source of information about the VR system, past and present; and have since become collectors’ items. After that they became merely a PR blurb sheet. The laundry dealt with the linen from the sleeping cars, dining & buffet cars, and the refreshment rooms, whilst the bakery supplied the refreshment rooms, dining and buffet cars. Where else do you think railway pies would come from?? Lesser known aspects were their typewriter repair depot that serviced typewriters from all Government departments across the State; their efficient and cheap parcels services to all parts of the State, and interstate as well; their daily carriage of most mails and newspapers across the State, as well as the lesser known (for obvious reasons!) carriage of cash and notes in plain unmarked wooden boxes to keep banks around the state supplied. They also had their own telephone and telegraph system.

And let’s not forget the Victorian Railways Institute, which looked after the professional and social wellbeing of railwaymen and their families for so many years, and continue to do so. The VRI Hall here in Traralgon is a small part of this statewide network.

Sadly, thanks to general rationalization, franchising, road transport competition; the march of time, and a woman called Thatcher; many of these services had disappeared by around 1990, and today, there are some, like the Victorian Railways administration in its final years, who would claim that railways belong to another era anyway.

In theory they do, but in spite of the noises from the vociferous and self-serving truck lobby, railways are still by far the most efficient and least polluting means of conveying heavy bulk loads such as mining products and grain; particularly for long-haul work: a fact not lost on the N.S.W., W.A., & Qld railway systems, who make a considerable proportion of their revenue from this traffic, and who have accordingly built new lines to connect to new mining projects. Thus, the expansion of mining can also be linked to railway expansion, although in most cases this is State-funded.

To give an illustration, nearly all of the cost of the Alice Springs – Darwin line was borne by either the S.A. & N.T. Governments; or the private sector. By contrast, thanks to Malcolm Fraser, the Tarcoola – Alice Springs section was largely paid for by the Commonwealth Government.



And here in Victoria, when they do decide to plough some money into the railway system, the Infrastructure department hasn’t helped itself by describing what really is a welcome and long overdue major upgrade of tracks and facilities, the likes of which have not been seen on some of our lines for many years, as a fast train project. 

If Batchelor and his advisors had concentrated on talking about system rehabilitation, instead of shooting themselves in the foot by telling people about fast trains, when we see only 10 or 15 minutes being sliced from normal timetables anyway, the general public would have had a greater understanding and appreciation of what most of the money was really being spent on, and as a result would have been much more supportive.

Instead, this has enabled the conservative (pro-road) media to make all sorts of extravagant claims about money being wasted on railways sound plausible, even though far greater sums are regularly spent on roads and their infrastructure without a murmur.

Indeed, it is a statistical fact that for the 13 years up to 2000, the Commonwealth Government spent some $43 billion on roads, and only a miserable $1.3 billion on railways, and I haven’t seen much evidence of any great change in that pattern since then. This gross imbalance is something that the various road lobby groups would for obvious reasons prefer not to talk about.

Then of course there was the matter of gauges, and this has always been a topic of heated debate in Australia, even today. Dr Mais unearthed evidence that the English standard gauge (versus narrow or broad gauge) was determined in 1826, when it was decreed that in order to overcome the proliferation of railway (and tramway) gauges starting to appear around England, the standard gauge would be 5ft, this measurement being from the outside edge of each rail. Since the heads of the rails of the time were 1-3/4 inches wide, this gave an inside gauge of 4ft 8½ins, which was later enshrined in legislation, and of course is still our standard gauge today. It is thought that this width was chosen because it allowed enough space between the rails for the horses hauling the wagons to walk without stumbling. Whether this proposal is the valid one or not, it seems at least plausible.

.

Whilst you may have heard the real reason for the variation between gauges across Australia, for those who haven’t, firstly let me say that it takes no imagination to work out that Mark Twain’s suggestion when he had to change trains at Albury that it was the result of a plot between the Customs officials of N.S.W. & Victoria, wasn’t really the case.

The real story involves a matter of English versus Irish railway engineers. Initially, when it was clear that Victoria, N.S.W. & S.A. would be building railways very nearly concurrently, they agreed that a common gauge would be desirable; and that common gauge would be the English standard gauge. Then the English engineer in N.S.W. was replaced by an Irish one, who insisted that the Irish gauge of 5ft 3ins was better. The other two states decided to fall into line, and changed their plans to broad gauge, and proceeded to order their rolling stock from England accordingly. Then out of the blue the Irish engineer in N.S.W. departed, to be replaced by another English one who wouldn’t have a bar of broad gauge, and demanded that Victoria & S.A. also change back to standard gauge. However, being committed already to rolling stock orders which were probably on their way, they couldn’t; and you know the rest. This is a topic N.S.W. railfans prefer not to discuss!

Just because Victoria and S.A. shared a common gauge, it didn’t mean that travellers between Adelaide and Melbourne have always had it easy. Prior to Mr Mais (the S.A.R. Chief Engineer) pushing the railway through the Adelaide hills, and across the 90-mile desert to make the connection between the two systems at Serviceton in 1887, when the Intercolonial Express began running, people travelling between Melbourne and Adelaide faced a circuitous route, which took them 40 hours to complete.

Leaving Melbourne they travelled to Hamilton, then on to Casterton. They then boarded a coach for Naracoorte, where a narrow-gauge train awaited them for the next section to Kingston. Here they took another coach for Meningie, where a steamer awaited them for a trip across Lake Alexandrina to Milang. At Milang another coach took them up the hills to Strathalbyn, where they boarded the train for Adelaide. One imagines that they only made such a trip out of necessity.

The only consolation over time was that Victoria’s became the biggest 5ft 3in gauge system in the world, far surpassing its Irish parent, with 5,000 route miles of track, along with 10 miles of street tramways (all 5ft 3in); and 122 miles of 2ft 6in narrow gauge. I can’t say broad gauge, because there is also a 5ft 6in broad gauge in other parts of the world, particularly in India. However the ultimate in broad gauge was the 7ft 0¼in gauge of I.K.Brunel’s Great Western Railway (in England). Its last services ran in 1890, and it was then converted to standard gauge to conform to the rest of the country. Why Mr Brunel didn’t settle for just 7ft is anybody’s guess!

Then later on the other States, with large sparsely settled areas to service, particularly Queensland & W.A., and to a lesser degree S.A., opted for the much cheaper to construct 3ft 6in gauge, which continues in use today. 

As well, in our local area we also had the 2ft 6in narrow gauge Moe – Walhalla line; and the exotic 900mm gauge of the former S.E.C(Vic) railways, whose main claim to fame, apart from the curious gauge, was that the electric locomotives employed were the only ones in the world with six pantographs (the devices that collect the electricity from the overhead wires).

In the process, double-gauge stations, have always been a fact of life across Australia, not the least in Victoria, which even in 1950 had 8 of them, and this doesn’t take into account locations where timber tramways met VR tracks. There are also several triple-gauge stations in S.A. as well; of which I believe there are only about 10 in the world.

Naturally all these different gauges and systems were a bonanza for Australian railfans, because of their variety, but now with privatization much of this diversity has disappeared.

Whilst prior to World War 2 there had been rumblings amongst the various railway administrators that the break of gauge question should be addressed, that’s as far as it went until the urgent demands of war-time activities hit the railways from 1940. Indeed, it’s fair to say that for both World Wars railways across the world played a major role in the war effort. Indeed, it has been argued that World War 1 couldn’t have been fought without them.

From this, two major problems with the Australian railway system became painfully obvious – one being the break of gauge at so many places; and the other the lack of a railway connection between Alice Springs and Darwin.

Since 1960 concerted efforts have been made by successive Federal and State Governments, with the result that all the Australian capitals are now linked by standard gauge tracks.



And as we all know, the Alice Springs – Darwin link has finally been completed. It is fair to say that the tardiness (like 50 years) associated with this was in no small way a result of a very effective road lobby in Canberra, who clearly didn’t see such a line as being in the interests of their members (which it isn’t), and I suspect it was only the EastTimor conflict that reminded Federal politicians that that link was still as urgent as the generals of World War 2 told their predecessors it was 50 years earlier, and that the interests of Australia as a nation were far more important than those of a group of truck operators.

A good illustration of the Generals’ frustration then was the need for additional locomotives for the poor orphan North Australia line around 1942. They were able to obtain them from W.A., but couldn’t send them across the Nullarbor, partly due to their being the wrong gauge, and partly due to the traffic on the transcontinental line being at saturation point anyway. They couldn’t ship them from Perth direct to Darwin, due to the activities of enemy warships in the Indian Ocean; and so they ended up shipping them to Sydney, then off-loading them onto another ship which continued around the east coast to Darwin. In the process of trans-shipping them in Sydney, apparently they dropped two of them into the harbour, and had to fish them out again. Little wonder the military people found the whole thing quite tedious.

And speaking of locomotives; not only did the railway systems build their own locomotives and rolling stock, but when their facilities were busy, they often contracted out locomotive building to English and sometimes American builders, as well as local firms. Unlike those in England, or more particularly America, who built only locomotives, a number of Australian engineering companies built not only railway locomotives, but also a considerable amount of mining machinery. Indeed, some were better known for their mining machinery than their locomotives. Firms such as Thompsons of Castlemaine; Phoenix Foundry, Ballarat; Walkers Ltd of Maryborough (Queensland); and James Martin of Gawler (S.A.) are four that immediately come to mind.

No doubt there were others too

But let’s look again at the community services the various railway systems provided, rather than just the basic carriage of passengers and goods, which we all know about anyway.

Nowadays we tend to consider railways as just another transport mode, but in the Australia of the 19th century, they were much more than that.

First and foremost they were a means of communication: communication between people, between communities, between towns and cities; and in Europe between countries.

As I recorded in an earlier effort, one of the most important things about the opening of the railway to Sale as far as the people of Sale were concerned, was to enable them to read the Melbourne papers on their day of publication – and that says a considerable amount.

When railways were being constructed about the State, in each major centre it was necessary to provide an adequate water supply, because steam locomotives don’t seem to go too well without it.

Thus, in many country towns, including Traralgon, the railways had to set up their own, resulting in quite a network of them across the State. Prior to many towns getting their own reticulated water supply, the railway water supply was the first available to residents, apart from their rainwater tanks. This was invaluable during summer, when those tanks ran dry; or to provide some sort of protection in the event of fire. As we’ve discussed previously, here in Traralgon a water main was run from the locomotive water supply down the length of Franklin St purely for the local fire brigade to tap into it should they have to fight a fire in one of the business premises, until years later when a reticulated town water supply was available to replace it.

As well, in small communities, such as those along the Traralgon – Maffra branch, in summer it was customary to place filled water tank wagons in their sidings to enable railway families to top up their house tanks, or again have a supply on hand for fire-fighting purposes.

Another important part of the business of running a railway was to have an adequate safeworking system. Because we followed English practice, this meant having some means of knowing roughly where each train was, and being able to keep them apart. With the Korumburra coal lines they used the quaint “one engine in steam” rule, which effectively ensured that nothing else in the way of a train could possibly be about. This wasn’t quite so with American railroads where the term “cornfield meet” gained currency as a result of the number they had over time. In our parlance this means a head-on smash in the middle of nowhere, as a result of neither driver knowing the other train was on that section of track, let alone coming towards them.

In order to have a satisfactory (& safe) system, it was essential to have some sort of telegraphic communication between stations. This resulted in one of two things – either the Post Office people strung their wires along the same set of poles, or the railways just allowed the community access to the railway phones – or in the very early days, Morse system. Thus, for a large percentage of towns about the State their first designated Post & Telegraph Offices were the local stations, often I suspect because they were the only ones with a telephone in the town. In the larger towns such as Traralgon perhaps, a telegram boy was part of the station staff. Even though he was appointed to the role, he had to rely on payment from those whose telegrams he delivered. It would seem that charges were calculated on the distance he had to travel to deliver same. In smaller stations which didn’t warrant a delivery person, they just waited until someone who lived in the area of the telegram’s recipient happened along, and they gave them the telegram to drop off.

In a logical progression I suppose, a major railway service was the carriage of mails. This was a large part of the railway’s activity, and in places like Traralgon a mail checker was part of the station’s staff. Because the Post Office contracts called for the cartage of mails 6 days a week, and there were many branch lines where trains didn’t run that frequently, the curious thing called a Postal Motor came into being. Indeed the Spirit of Salts above was one such. This was a ganger’s trolley that ran to convey the mails to those places on the days the trains didn’t run. Locally, the Walhalla and Thorpdale lines were examples. Passengers were able to travel too if they wished.

In the early years of the railways, carriages called Travelling Post Offices were attached to long distance trains. Indeed, here in Victoria the BCE car-vans started out life as Travelling Post Offices. They were in essence mail sorting vans, in which Post Office staff sorted letters and placed them into bags as the train travelled, for passing out at the various stations along the way.

The British had the matter of mail trains and travelling post offices down to a fine art, with all sorts of contrivances to collect and drop off mail at speed, which were generally not used here.

In Victoria this arrangement didn’t last long, but in N.S.W. because it was a larger state, these T.P.O’s ran right up to the 1970’s, usually on the night trains. This is why most N.S.W.G.R. long-haul trains were known by such names as “Western Mail”; “Southern Mail”; “Coonamble Mail” etc because they were the only means by which all the towns along their route received their mail.

They were also sleeping car trains, because most travelled through the night and arrived at their destination the next morning, such as the one to Dubbo.

Since the 1980’s when the Post Office set up its network of Mail Centres around Australia, all serviced by road trucks, the railways are no longer involved.

Other trains which didn’t have TPO’s were called expresses, such as the Kosciusko Express, a sleeping car train which conveyed skiers from Sydney to Cooma during the night Friday night for a weekend of skiing on the nearby snowfields, and returned to Sydney on Sunday evenings..

Whilst talking about N.S.W., on their more isolated lines, mainly in the western area of the State, their Baby Health Centre cars operated. These serviced those remote communities where mothers with babies had no other means of assistance with their infants. These carriages were set up at the one end as a normal baby health centre, and at the other were the living quarters for the sister in charge. They ran to a timetable, and were taken from place to place by goods trains which picked them up and dropped them off in sidings as required. In deference to the climate, they boasted outside blinds; as far as I know the only N.S.W.G.R. cars that did. A similar system also operated on the narrow-gauge lines in S.A.. An example of one is on display at the Cobar Heritage Centre.

Unlike Europe, in Australia generally, the railways played a major role not only in the opening up and settlement of vast areas of the nation, but more particularly it enabled those who went to live there to better market their produce. As well, it allowed them to diversify, rather than be confined to producing what could be walked to market. Of course it also enabled them to get their more perishable items, such as butter or fish to markets in the larger centres quickly before they spoiled, given that they certainly didn’t have the luxury of refrigeration. It also enabled the settlers and sawmillers to transport their timber and firewood to the larger cities, where there was a ready market, rather than the settlers having to burn it all, which would have otherwise been the case.

And whilst on farming, in Victoria for some years from around 1920 they ran the Better Farming Train, which covered much of the State, taking out to the country people all sorts of innovations in stock and crop management, as well as (like the above) assistance and advice for farmers’ wives. Along with quarters for the staff, and carriages set up as lecture rooms, they even had livestock in wagons, obviously for demonstration purposes. Again, like the Baby Health Centre cars above, they also followed a timetable; the time spent in each place depending on its size. Naturally, being a train, it got itself about the countryside.

In Victoria in the 1930’s we also had a mobile radio station, which was set up in an old State carriage called the Melville, and used to get about the various parts of the State, mainly the Goulburn Valley and Gippsland; spending about a week in each location. Again, like the Baby Health Centre cars, it was taken to its next spot by a goods train going that way. It was operated by Young Brothers, and in the end they tired of all the travel, and settled in Warrnambool with their radio station, which became the well-known 3YB. The Melville was used for years on the school train, and is now in the railway museum at Seymour.

The well-known Tea & Sugar train, which used to traverse the Transcontinental railway for the benefit of all the railway personnel living along it was also a community service, but since so much has been said about it over time, there’s little need for me to say more. The various wagons etc that it comprised are now in the Port Dock Museum in Adelaide.

And on a sadder note, during the first century of the VR there were also the funeral trains conveying the deceased and their mourners to either Springvale or Fawkner cemeteries; the former having its own branch line. Fortunately a group of enthusiasts has been able to restore one of the hearse cars, which is now on display.

In N.S.W. the story was the same, with Rookwood cemetery also having its own branch line. The major differences were the mortuary stations built at both Rookwood and Sydney Central. The latter, with its sandstone Gothic arches, served as a parcels station when the funeral trains ceased, but as I understand it, it now has a Heritage listing, and will be preserved for posterity, as it should be, given that it is so unique.

As well, in places such as Korumburra, where the railway ran alongside the cemetery, and in winter the roads were just a bog, and thus impassable, funerals were conducted by loading the coffin onto a railway trolley, and wheeling it from the town to the cemetery, with the mourners walking along the track behind it. Indeed, there was one instance where the deceased’s home was at Silkstone, so the coffin was wheeled up the Coal Creek line to the junction with the main line, and then they set off for the cemetery. Let’s hope it didn’t rain too much!!

Then during the Second World War, apart from the many trains the run-down Australian systems were called upon to run to convey troops and their equipment from place to place, the various systems also set up hospital trains to cater for the wounded arriving home. Apart from photos, we have no other idea of what they were like, because all were converted back to their original configurations once the war ended.

However this conveying of sick people wasn’t a new thing for Australian railways. Probably up to the turn of the 20th century, when better equipped regional hospitals started to appear, they were called on to carry very sick and injured people to metropolitan hospitals. The best example I can give is from my research into Jumbunna & Outtrim, where a fellow was driving his wagon across a railway crossing, and the horse jibbed. In the process of trying to get the horse to move, the Outtrim train came along and hit them. The train stopped, they loaded the man into the guard’s van, and went on their way. At Jumbunna they off-loaded the poor fellow into the Stationmaster’s office; and the train continued to Outtrim. On the return journey to Korumburra they put this man back onto the train, and took him to Korumburra, where he was transferred to the hospital. Upon examination at the hospital they decided that they couldn’t do anything for him, and he was taken back to the station and put on the late afternoon train to Melbourne.

Needless to say, the poor man died in the Melbourne hospital the next morning of a fractured skull, and a number of other lesser injuries. Goodness, how he must have suffered during those train trips!! What happened to the horse is not recorded.

And I’m sure this sort of thing took place not only in South Gippsland, but in many country areas.

But I suppose the ultimate in community service was the Free Train. Clearly, for economic rationalists whose first question would be “Who pays?” it’s an incomprehensible concept.

However, it did exist, even though one had to travel to Fiji to find it – no doubt because there they didn’t ask who paid. Twice a week it plied the sugar tramways around the main island of Viti Levu, and it enabled locals to travel from town to town if they so desired. Its only problem seemed to be that it had no timetable, so finding it to ride on for somebody who wasn’t a local could be a problem.

One assumes the sugar mills carried the cost.

And finally, since I have spoken of railway museums in various spots, this logically brings me to railway enthusiasts – or railway buffs as the stupid media say - which I’ve also mentioned.

Unlike in England, where the National Government has set up and runs their various railway museums, and all the enthusiasts and others have to do is turn up and look, here in Australia all this has had to be done voluntarily by the railway enthusiast community of the places concerned – sometimes in spite of the local railway administrations.

It is fair to say that by far the best Railway Museum in Australia for rolling stock is Adelaide’s Port Dock Museum, whilst the best for memorabilia etc is at Bassendean in Perth, which also has the only railway locomotives built by a firm specializing in submarines, and for which the then Railway Commissioner was eventually sacked.. Both of these museums were set up by the local A.R.H.S. group; an Australia-wide body that began in Sydney in 1933. For administrative reasons the Port Dock group has since become a separate entity.



But sadly, it is fair to say that the poor level of community understanding (or appreciation) of railfan groups is largely a legacy of adverse media coverage in years gone by: coverage which in spite of their best efforts has often portrayed railfans as overgrown kids who have never moved on from the toy trains of their childhood. This demeaning attitude has caused railfans over time to be reticent about publicity, and hence the level of public ignorance of their activities, even though there are about 5000 of them Australia-wide, drawn from all walks of life.

Thus, when the attention of the general public is drawn to any aspect of railway (or tramway) research, preservation, restoration etc, they quite wrongly assume that the respective (Australian) authorities are undertaking them, which in many cases couldn't be further from the truth, because the various systems, see their role as running railways, not preserving them.

Now, with privatization this is even more so.

And after those lugubrious spots I’ve waded through, let’s be light-hearted and look at music – no, I won’t ask you to sing!!, but over many years railways have been the theme for many melodic tunes whether it is “Orange Blossom Special” based on a train run for Japanese honeymooning couples, “Funiculi Funicula” written for the opening of an Italian funicular railway; or indeed “Southern Roarer” to honour the now defunct Southern Aurora. However, my favourite, and indeed probably my theme song is from Johnny Cash who spent a lot of time on trains – as I have I suppose – and it’s called “I’ve Got a Thing About Trains.”.

I think that I’ve rambled on enough, so I’d better stop.