Tuesday 17th October 2017 - Be Part of History

Good news Stephen, I'll be in if it doesn't conflict with a CSR trip I'm going on next year.

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Thanks Stephen, We will see if we can work that date into next year's trekking.

Gday Stephen
I just told Darling i wont be home for my birthday party next year.

Stephen, are you going to bring the silver-plated hammer and dog spike to carry out a re-enactment of the joining of the Trans Australian Railway, rails? [;-)

Here's some interesting snippets about the TAR construction ....

1. The TAR had a hospital car. The photos indicate that there would have been only some very basic medical treatment carried out in it!

2. There were also other construction railcars that held offices such as engineers office and paymasters office.

3. Initially, four Baldwin Locomotives were ordered from New York by the Commonwealth Railways of Australia, for the TAR in January 1913 - primarily for speed of delivery - but political pressure to "buy Australian", resulted in the Baldwin order being cancelled, and Clyde Engineering of NSW, supplying the first four, G-class locos.

Later on, with Clyde under great pressure, construction of more G-class locos was undertaken by the Toowoomba Foundry.
However, a wartime dearth of labour and other demands on TF, meant that a major portion of the construction of the next lot of G-class locos, was carried out by the Queensland Railway workshops at Ipswich.

3. Two of the first four standard-gauge G-class locomotives initially built by Clyde in NSW, were sent by ship to Fremantle - then railed to Kalgoorlie from Perth in Completely-Knocked-Down form, to be assembled in Kalgoorlie, for use on the TAR.

Standard gauge rail trucks and carriages were also sent up from Perth and assembled in Kalgoorlie (Parkeston, actually).
In March 1914, two more of the next four G-class locos - that had been re-ordered from Baldwin to speed up loco delivery - were landed at Fremantle and railed to Kalgoorlie for assembly.
The entire interesting story of the early TAR locomotives is in the bottom link below.

4. For the first few years of operation, the G-class locos weren't fitted with any headlights! Could you imagine being an engine driver, ploughing through the night in complete darkness??

5. Camels provided a large part of the animal power in the line construction - to carry water and other supplies out to the furtherest-forward workers - to carry out railway embankment and cutting earthworks by pulling simple earth scoops - to digging dams for water for the steam trains, also using the earth scoops.

6. The rail line was laid on the bare finished earthworks, with no ballast! The TAR line wasn't ballasted until 1940!

7. There was a pretty swish-looking 1914 Studebaker used as a railmotor inspection vehicle!

8. An early and very rare, McDonald "oil engine tractor" was used to clear the scrub from the path of the railway alignment. One early photo shows this tractor being repaired, with a rear wheel removed.
This tractor was essentially just a large rectangular frame with a large horizontal oil-engine installed in the frame, driving the large rear wheels via a simple single-gear reduction.

The first link below, is to a blokes early Australian railway photos on Flickr.

There's some fabulous photos there - and I don't know where he got them all from!

The photos range from before WW1, up to the 1970's - and they show the TAR, the Central Australian Railway, and the North Australian Railway as well.

There's pics of some amazing washouts, and train accidents, and line repairs.

I haven't gone through them all yet - there's hundreds of them! - but starting from the first pic in the link below, and scrolling right, yields a few dozen early photos of the TAR construction - including a pic of the original tracklayer!

Early Australian Railway photos

The Commonwealth Railways early standard gauge G-class locos story

Quite a number of early photos of the TAR show a movie camera taking photos of the train, and also mounted on the front of the loco for filming.
I wonder if any of those early movies of the TAR have survived?

Cheers, Ron.