Gundagai - Last Use Of Line?
Telstra
Happy New Year to you all. We overnighted in Gundagai last night and went
exploring this morning and found a railway station and rail bridge over the
river. Can anybody tell me 1/ When it was that Gundagai had its last rail
service and 2/ What main and/or branch line was it on? Thanks in advance.
David
David Proctor
>river. Can anybody tell me 1/ When it was that Gundagai had its last rail
>service and 2/ What main and/or branch line was it on?
Gundagai was on the line from Cootamundra to Tumut - there was a branch from
just outside Tumut that went to Batlow.
David
Thanks for a fast reply (have now fixed my name in the new reader here). Do
you have any idea when the line was last used at all?
David
David Proctor wrote in message
<76muok$qie$1...@reader1.reader.news.ozemail.net>...
David Proctor
>Thanks for a fast reply (have now fixed my name in the new reader here). Do
>you have any idea when the line was last used at all?
I believe that the passenger services were replaced by buses (oops, luxury
co-ordinated road coaches) in the late 1980's (could have been 1986, but I
am not sure) - not sure about freight!
Maurie Daly
>From: "David Proctor" <daproc....@umpires.com>
>Subject: Re: Gundagai - Last Use Of Line?
>Date: Sun, 3 Jan 1999 16:56:41 +1100
>DaveP
>http://derek.jenkins.net/ozemail/index.html
I cant comment on when the last freight actually ran , but in 1978 there were
4 freights per week in both directions from Coota to Tumut , with a
conditional freight from Tumut to Batlow 3 times per week.
There were 2 rail motor services per day on weekdays in both directions ,
usually CPHs .
MD
David McLoughlin
> I believe that the passenger services were replaced by buses (oops, luxury
> co-ordinated road coaches) in the late 1980's (could have been 1986, but I
> am not sure) - not sure about freight!
Do the buses run past the dog on the tuckerbox?
No, don't answer that. I just recall stopping there almost every
Christmas holidays on the road trips my father made me endure as a child
driving from our home in Melbourne to and from the rellies in Brisbane.
The New England Highway. "On to Tenterfield" (and the next pub) as he'd
say after a few beers. Coonabarabran. I'm amazed I survived so much
drunken driving. Once he was so paralytic he even made me drive, and I
was about 14 and barely able to see above the steering wheel. At least
it was an automatic.
Urghhh. Thanks for reminding me!
David McLoughlin
Auckland New Zealand
Flight engineer: I don’t like this.
Captain: We’re 26 miles north, I’ll have to climb out of this.
GPWS: Whoop whoop! Pull up! Pull up!
Captain: Go round power, please.
Flight engineer: Five hundred feet.
GPWS: Whoop whoop! Pull up! Pull up!
Flight engineer: Four hundred.
GPWS: Whoop whoop------
End of tape.
-- The last moments of Air New Zealand flight TE 901 and its 257
passengers and crew, Mt Erebus, Antarctica, November 28 1979. Twenty
years ago this year.
David
>Do the buses run past the dog on the tuckerbox?
Don't actually know but we stopped there and bought the fridge magnet :)
>was about 14 and barely able to see above the steering wheel. At least
>it was an automatic.
>Urghhh. Thanks for reminding me!
I can remember those road trips as a child .... I would have liked to have
gone by rail anytime.
It was sad seeing the decline of Gundagai and from the previous posting if
there was 4 goods trains and two passenger railcars a day why on earth would
they close the complete line I wonder? Of interest the points at the north
end of the station still work :) we had a bit of a play while there and
walked along the dead tracks for a bit and the dead feeling of the whole
place was quite errie!
David
David Proctor
>It was sad seeing the decline of Gundagai and from the previous posting if
>there was 4 goods trains and two passenger railcars a day why on earth
would
>they close the complete line I wonder?
That was four goods trains a week.
GOODWIN ALCO
along with those out of Coota to Lake Cargellico and
Griffith?
I seem to remember a mass withdrawal of most rural
branch services around the state with that timetable,
the last in that area being the Junee to Griffith run.
Brad
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Werris Creek
Be sure to check out the Tumut line around Coolac which apart from the
crossing of the Hume highway is still pretty much in place. The old
rail-served fertiliser silo is still there at Coolac.
The Feds have just announced funding for the last link in the upgrading of
the Hume Highway which is the bit around Coolac. I do not know what the
proposal is but it may see more of the old line to Tumut disappear.
Happy New Year
Werris
Garry Hoddinett
Telstra wrote in message ...
>
>David
I recall spending some time at Tumut in 1984 and if I can recall right the
line had been closed for at least for six months. I believe the Tumut
branch experienced some bad bushfire damage in early 1983. The damage may
have been further compounded by subsequently flood damage - such is life in
Australia. But these are the excuses the rail authorities can use to close
uneconomic branch lines. I remember speaking to a local during my visit in
1984 and he was saying the locals were lobying for the reinstatement of the
rail line as a number of the big timber companies in town were still
interested in using it. I believe the big killer for economic operation of
the line was the cost of maintaining the huge timber viaduct and bridge over
the Murrumbidgee Bridge at Gundagai.
Chris Brownbill
>
> I believe that the passenger services were replaced by buses (oops, luxury
> co-ordinated road coaches) in the late 1980's (could have been 1986, but I
> am not sure) - not sure about freight!
>
Actually the last timetable containing passenger trains to Gundagai was
the 28/November 1982 SRA country and interstate timetable. Table 10 was
for the Cootamundra to Tumut line, and listed two trains per day six
days per week. The first departed Cootamundra at 0540 Mondays to
Saturdays, connecting with the South Mail from Sydney, then Coolac 0613,
Gundagai 0629, Mt Horeb 0704 Tumut 0740. This train then returned as
follows Tumut 0805, Mt Horeb 0840, Gundagai 0914, Coolac 0931 and
Cootamundra 1005 connecting with the Up Riverina XPT to Sydney. Then in
the afternoon another return run was made connecting with the down
Riverina XPT, departing Cootamundra at 1725, Coolac 1758, Gundagai 1814,
Mt Horeb 1949(sic!), Tumut 1925 and return Tumut 2010, Mt Horeb 2049,
Gundagai 2133, Coolac 2152 and Cootamundra 2237 connecting with the up
South Mail to Sydney.
It was quite a site to see, as I did on one occasion in 1983, a CPH
railmotor making a connection with an XPT. Having arrived at
Cootamundra on the down Riverina XPT at 1712 on a Saturday afternoon
there was the delightful site of simulataneous departures at 1725 of CPH
railcars to Tumut and Wyalong Central.
The next timetable, that of 27 November 1983 saw the replacement of the
Cootamundra to Tumut railcar with "road coaches" running Cootamundra
Tumut Adelong to more or less the same schedule as above. This was a
very sad timetable because in one fell swoop it saw the abolotion of
services on very many branch lines, Cootamundra-Tumut,
Cootamundra-Wyalong-Lake Cargelligo, Narrandera-Hay,
Narrandera-Tocumwal, Harden-Young-Cowra, Cowra-Blayney, Parkes-Forbes,
Moree-Inverell, Tamworth-Barraba and Narrabri to Walgett. All in all a
candidate for the worst timetable ever published!
David Proctor
>The next timetable, that of 27 November 1983 saw the replacement of the
>Cootamundra to Tumut railcar with "road coaches" running Cootamundra
>Tumut Adelong to more or less the same schedule as above. This was a
>very sad timetable because in one fell swoop it saw the abolotion of
>services on very many branch lines, Cootamundra-Tumut,
>Cootamundra-Wyalong-Lake Cargelligo, Narrandera-Hay,
>Narrandera-Tocumwal, Harden-Young-Cowra, Cowra-Blayney, Parkes-Forbes,
>Moree-Inverell, Tamworth-Barraba and Narrabri to Walgett. All in all a
>candidate for the worst timetable ever published!
You cannot be serious! I, as much as anybody, like to see trains running
instead of buses. However, you have to be realistic. There is no way that
these branch lines could sustain a passenger service in this day and age. In
the 1980's, 90's and beyond, there really is only a place for main-line
services, and branch lines (as well as places that are not on the rail
network) are definitely best serviced with coaches.
Whilst the timetable mentioned above may be the "saddest" timetable, it is
in no way the "worst" - in fact, replacing some of those branch lines with
coaches, and thereby greatly reducing the amounts lost, they may have
contributed to less cost-cutting than we have seen. This is certainly the
opinion in Britain, where the Beeching era cuts, whilst drastic, are widely
acclaimed to be what saved the railways from even more drastic closures.
Eddie Oliver
>
> You cannot be serious! I, as much as anybody, like to see trains running
> instead of buses. However, you have to be realistic. There is no way that
> these branch lines could sustain a passenger service in this day and age. In
> the 1980's, 90's and beyond, there really is only a place for main-line
> services, and branch lines (as well as places that are not on the rail
> network) are definitely best serviced with coaches.
That historically reflects not the necessity of the matter, but merely
the realities of bad management.
If railmotors cost so much more to maintain and run than buses, you have
to ask why. Answer - they were maintained by vastly overstaffed
workshops and depots working to ridiculously restrictive work practices,
they were two (or more) person crewed, they were often allowed to
degenerate instead of having proper maintenance strategies, and so on.
If you tried to run a bus system on the same basis that they tried to
run railmotors, that would have been hopelessly uneconomic too.
Moreover much of the traffic conveyed by the railmotors was parcels,
small goods consignments etc. That was allegedly uneconomic too. Yet the
same traffic is conveyed economically successfully on other modes.
Again, what is the difference? Answer - bad management, especially
related to mismanagement of human resources.
Of course it may indeed have been uneconomic to maintain the lines
themselves, on the basis that the total (freight plus passenger) traffic
offering was insufficient to cover the costs of track maintenance. But
that is a separate issue from that of abandoning the passenger services
while the lines continued to exist for freight.
Eddie Oliver
Ross D Goldspink
when many sleepers burnt out closing the line.
The fire started by a slasher hitting a rock about 15 miles west and raced
across stubble paddocks with 60k winds at about 38 C - reached the railway
before firefighters had a chance.
Goldie
ROY HOWARTH
stations (or halts) were situated nowhere near the towns they were meant
to serve, and these stations were of a terribly rundown state.
Also low patronage meant very infrequent services on antiquated,
passenger-repellent rail motors or loco-hauled's (although the Junee -
Griffith Budd railcars and were the only exception). As early as the
1970's some lines reached the stage where railfans on NuRail passes were
the only passengers! Many of these towns had moved on from the era of the
"local mixed" and improvements in road transport meant many town were
able to get by without the infrequent rail service, just as is the case
today.
One benefit of the coaches was air-conditioned travel closer to the
various town centres as well as other towns not previously served by
rail. However, where State Rail went wrong was in maintaining their own
fleet of road coaches. It made the Railways look like hypocrites. What
they should have done instead was to contract the services out to local
operators (which I think is the case today).
Roy H
>
>You cannot be serious! I, as much as anybody, like to see trains running
>instead of buses. However, you have to be realistic. There is no way that
>these branch lines could sustain a passenger service in this day and age. In
>the 1980's, 90's and beyond, there really is only a place for main-line
>services, and branch lines (as well as places that are not on the rail
>network) are definitely best serviced with coaches.
>
nsw...@ozemail.com.au
wrote:
>Hi Guys,
>
>Happy New Year to you all. We overnighted in Gundagai last night and went
>exploring this morning and found a railway station and rail bridge over the
>river. Can anybody tell me 1/ When it was that Gundagai had its last rail
>service and 2/ What main and/or branch line was it on? Thanks in advance.
>
G'day.
I see that no one finally answered your question about the last train.
Rail passenger services between Cootamundra and Tumut were
discintinued following the services operated on Saturday 26/11/1983.
Freight services were suspended on 16/1/1984 following flooding in the
Gilmore area, washing away part of the bridge located about a half km
or so on the Gundagai side of Gilmore. The last freight train had
operated over the section on 13/1/1984. Luckily, no trains were
"trapped" by the washaway.
The branch connection at cootamundra was removed on 22/7/1990.
Hunslet.
Barry Campbell
<snip>
>
> The next timetable, that of 27 November 1983 saw the replacement of the
> Cootamundra to Tumut railcar with "road coaches" running Cootamundra
> Tumut Adelong to more or less the same schedule as above. This was a
> very sad timetable because in one fell swoop it saw the abolotion of
> services on very many branch lines, Cootamundra-Tumut,
> Cootamundra-Wyalong-Lake Cargelligo, Narrandera-Hay,
> Narrandera-Tocumwal, Harden-Young-Cowra, Cowra-Blayney, Parkes-Forbes,
> Moree-Inverell, Tamworth-Barraba and Narrabri to Walgett. All in all a
> candidate for the worst timetable ever published!
Except for the passengers!
Barry Campbell