Thread: Train Spotting Question

Hi JayKay, someone on AULRO may have an answer for you but also try asking the question on the Railpage web site, the like is below.

Cheers and best of luck.

http://www.railpage.com.au/f.htm

Having some interest in steam, I had a look around for the subject- and found this
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~ajh/trains/private/JABrown.html#ROD

Well, it may not be LR, but they can have a place in REMLR - as they were military owned trains of WW1 - the Army R ailway O perating D ept

I tend to think that it is unlikely that any of 13 imported by J & A Brown coal railways made it up to Queensland - I doubt that BHP in he late 60's would pay for modifications (and spare boilers) for WW1 engines to operate in QLD. ( And for the curious, next time you visit Zig Zag, have a look at how wide their tracks are: they rebuilt the zig zag at 3 foot 6, rather than the English and NSW standard of 4 foot 8 - which is why most of the zig zag rolling stock is from queensland)

Besides, with a steelworks nearby at Newcastle, I'd reckon the last 9 of the loco's got melted down in the 70's.

Originally Posted by JayKay

Apparently there's an abandoned yard full of these somewhere in the Hammersley Ranges.
The Lost ROD's



The story is that 13 were imported by a mining company in NSW, a couple ended up in the Dorigo Museum and a third somewhere else in NSW but the rest is a mystery.

Anybody out there spotted them on their travels

Any info gratefully recieved

I sincerely doubt it. There have been numerous expeditions into the outback of Australia to try and find alledged stores like this and ex miltary strong holds. My BIW and his father and some mates where involved in one of these trip some years ago and did find an underground hanger, but no worthwhile machinery to speak of. There are a lot of legends like this out there, but no confirmatory doccumentation.

Craig, where was the underground hanger?
Do you have any pictures?

Cheers,
Fraser

G'day All, Thats the best laugh I've had in quite a while, lost steam engines in WA, seriously though it isn't hard to fall into the trap of believing such things exist, especially if you don't live in this country, I do remember seeing a picture of a large group of 'Mikado' engines left over from WW2 but they were somewhere in Greece.
These engines the ROD worked in my backyard so to speak, I used to see them frequently going about their chores hauling coal. I travelled to school every day by train from Cessnock to Maitland on the South Maitland Railway (SMR), back in the early 60's.
As far as I'm aware there are only 3 engines left in this part of the world, I know the RVR (Richmond Vale Railway) has 3 (No 10 & 21 & ??), the DSRM (Dorrigo Steam rail Musuem, Nthrn NSW) has ROD's 20 & 24, somewhere in my head I can still clearly see all the Loco's that J & A Brown used, all lined up alongside the Pacific Hwy at Hexham waiting for the scrappers torch, others met their fate at Pelaw Main sheds where they were cut up to save hauling them to Hexham way back in 1966.
There was some talk that one of the Loco's ROD's was the one that hauled the Armistice train in France, but subsequent research has failed to validate this claim, anyway I have a picture of 2 of these locos at RVR but I don't know how to post pictures.
I also have a model that I built of a NSWGR 32 class engine in 5" gauge, it does run on air so it should run on steam, but I sorta lost interest after an eye injury back in 1992 anyway waffling on here cheers Dennis

G'day All, I forgot to add that maybe this all started from the Pendennis Castle, it was up in the Pilbara region, but that engine went back to the UK a few years back, anyway cheers Dennis

My apologies - since the edit function is not available, let me edit the following:

Hammersley Ranges are in Western Australia - and they use standard gauge - but still it is doubtful that spare parts (boilers etc) would have been available to let the engines operate after the early 60's. which is why they stopped operating in Newcastle.

Thanks for the info, much appreciated, didn't think about the gauge thing meself but it all adds up now, cheers