RAIL TALES Thread, tell your rail stories here

Manildra here at Nowra had many years ago a small rail wagon which was powered by a forklift.
It was used for shunting other railway wagons around.
The idea is a set of ramps are lowered and the forklift drives onto the rail wagon.
One end of the wagon has a set of wheel rollers which the drive wheels of the forklift drops into.
The forklift is chained down via chain down points on the wagon and forklift.
The forklift now becomes the power plant for the wagon which has buffers on one end for shunting.
They still could have this wagon, but they now use small locos on the Nowra site.
Anyone seen what I have described in use and how well did it work.
Ron

http://railquip.thomasnet.com/viewit...rom-1-5-9-tons

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48-6i97w4xQ"]Forklift Propelled Rail Car Mover Railquip - YouTube[/ame]

I'm certainly a rail enthusiast and have enjoyed a couple of memorable steam related "adentures".

First one was to ride on the footplate of a NZ steam loco up the spectacular scenic rail line from Cairns to Kuranda. I think the loco only ran for a year or so, then was retired due to lack of patronage. Odd really, given a steam hauled tourist train should be MUCH more popular than the boring diesel hauled version... but I think it had a lot to do with the fact that QR ran he diesel service and promoted it to the tourists, but they had no incentive to help out the private steam hauled competitor of course.

BTW, I was in Cairns late last year and the steam loco is still sitting in the shed opposite the airport,together with its rolling stock. Hopefully one day it's be back in service.


The other wonderful experience was to spend a full day learning to drive a little steam loco on the Puffing Billy Railway in the Dandenongs near Melbourne. My wife bought me this so called "Footplate experience" as a 60th birthday present. Best birthday I every had!
It's not cheap, but you can cram all your family and friends into the couple of carriages behind the loco for free, so overall, the cost is not too bad.
Highly recommended, and the proceeds go toward restoring other locos on this very busy little railway.
Here's the link if you'd like to know more: puffing billy | Drive a Steam Train

Well while we wait for some Tales from others, I’ll post up another from my days on the job.

It was a stinking hot Sunday afternoon and I was to do a driver change at Parramatta station.

A Red Rattle rolled up and I changed over with the driver. As I did, he told me he didn’t think the set was running all that well.

By this time, it was not unusual for the old Red Rattlers to be down on power but because of where this set was heading, if there was a problem and a set was not working at it best, so this is the reason the driver indicated the old set was not running all that well.

The train was an all stations to Burwood then express to Redfern and then all stations to Hornsby and this meant going over the Harbour bridge.

The grade from Wynyard to the crest of the Harbour bridge is the steepest main line in Australia and trains have to be running properly or there can be so major disruptions to time tables all over the suburban network if a train fails on this particular section of track.

If you do fail on the grade, the only thing they can do is empty all the passengers out of the next train behind you and then get it to push you over the bridge, but this is a long and involved procedure.

anyway, I drove the to Redfern and was not impressed with it’s performance.

This is before they had radios and at Redfern, under each of the steps at the Northern end of each platform is an emergency phone.

This phone is a direct line to DEFECTS. Defects is the section that is responsible for repairing or replacing trains in service if they have some form of failure.

The reason for the emergency phones at Redfern was to allow defects to “TRANSPOSE” a faulty train with a good one at Central.

How this works, if you have a defective train bound for Hornsby, you contact Defects when you get to Redfern and they organise to run your train across into platform 17 at Central. This is the City Circle line.

They then route the next City Circle train into platform 16, the North Shore line.

When both trains are on the platform, passengers are asked to charge trains and the GOOD train now operates to Hornsby and the faulty train is worked around the City Circle and out of service.

When I get to Redfern I ring Defects but they have a problem elsewhere in the network and there is no replacement train available for some time.

They ask me whether I think the train will make the grade up to the bridge. I told them I wasn’t sure one way or the other. So they suggested I run through the Wynyard and they would have someone waiting at the end of the platform.

If the train was not up to it, they would then empty my train and I would work it a little over 8 cars ( railway carriages ) into the tunnel and just clear of an emergency crossover on the northern side of Wynyard station.

I could then change ends and work back to the opposite line over the emergency crossover and then out of service.

As mine was the first train for some time, I had picked up a good few extra passengers at Central, Town hall and all those waiting at Wynyard and there was someone waiting for me at the end of the platform at Wynyard.

I told the guy I reckoned I should be OK.

I got the right-of-way from the guard and powered out of the platform.

The tracks do an immediate rise at the end of the platform but the train kept accelerating and all seemed fine.

But not for long.

By the time I had the the whole train in the tunnel and on the grade, the train was no longer accelerating and was starting to loose speed and as I was now beyond the point of no return, all I could do was keep going.

It’s normally a 3 minute run from Wynyard to Milsons Point ( on the other side of the bridge )

It took more than 10 minutes before the train emerged from the tunnel and on to the bridge’s southern approach and the train was just getting slower.

As I posted above, it was a stinking hot afternoon, so I had the driver’s side door open to try to get some breeze through the cab.

As I approached the southern pylon, a guy on a push bike cycled passed me, going in the same direction. With a smile on his face he gave a wave and I waved back.

As the tracks pass through the pylon, the grade progressively eases as you go over the main arch of the bridge.

The Red Rattler slowly starts to accelerate and I catch up to the cyclist, and as I SLOWLY overtake him, I shouted out to him ”My turn” and the next thing I hear is passengers clapping in the carriage behind me.

Much embarrassment!

Needless to say, they blow the train out at North Sydney.

As an apprentice radio mechanic with the NSW Govt in the early eighties in Orange NSW I rapidly became familiar with the NSWGR. One week in three I would depart Orange at 07:30 on a 620 rail motor to Lithgow where I would catch the interurban to Sydney, change at Strathfield and catch the Flyer to Newcastle. A whole day of sitting on my bum enjoying the ambiance of NSW railways at their best.
The return trip was to catch the flyer from Newcastle at about 16:00 ( which meant that I never finished Thursday afternoon prac at tech ) get into Sydney at about 18:00 and go exploring until I caught the Western Mail home at 10:25.
Being a government Apprentice I was entitled to a sleeper berth on the way home so I would retire to the comfort of my TAM or occasionally BAM or EAM sleeper to be gently awakened at Orange at 04:30 with a cuppa and a milk arrowroot ( sometimes.......)
One night I received grateful thanks from the conductor who I woke up as we were coming in through Spring Hill, on another occasion I got to use some choice words to the Orange Station Master who chastised me for crossing the tracks. My reply was that I wouldn't be walking across the tracks to the platform if I hadn't had to jump from a moving train being shunted to East Fork to continue to Parkes!
I had a mate that was working his way up in the station staff hierarchy at the same time, he made the dizzying height of Station Master at Nashdale before he decided his career was not going anywhere. Nashdale was a shed and crossing loop 10 KM west of Orange on the line to Parkes. He was seeing a couple of trains a day and handing the staff to them in between entertaining girlfriends and shooting rats in the long drop.
All in all I had a great time discovering the delights of Sydney on Thursday evenings with excursions to Bondi Junction, Manly, walking across the Harbour Bridge, exploring George and Pitt Streets etc. All pretty adventurous stuff for a 16 - 18 year old country boy. Sydney has certainly changed in the last 20 years. It was in this time frame that they replaced the big destination board at Central with CRT displays, forever changing the atmosphere at Central, mail trains are no more, the Sydney street scape has changed beyond recognition. I feel privileged to have experienced the last hurrah of country rail.

Regards,
Tote

Well it’s too quite in Rail Tales so here is how one of my trips went, back in the mid seventies.

A bit of background info first.

As a fireman, unless you was teamed up with a driver on the Top Roster, you would be the Pencil Roster ( meaning it could be changed as required.

You would normally sign on with a deferent driver each shift, but I was rostered with a young driver a couple of times and we were assigned as a permanent crew.

As mentioned my driver was a young block, with a young family, so he was pretty money hungry and so was I as had cameras and a car to support. You will understand what I’m on about shortly!

About half the jobs on the Pencil Roaster were just that. They would be pencilled in as they were needed, but about half were regular runs, including quite a few Barracks jobs.

We signed on one afternoon for one of the regular barracks jobs and one we both disliked because it was two short shifts ( low paying jobs ). One going to barracks, in Goulburn and another short shift coming back.

After signing on, we walked up to Enfield North Box and relived a crew on a High Wheeler ( express goods train ) and the train was ready to go.

We pretty well got the road straight after changing over, and a few hours later, we were in Goulburn. Signed off and when to barracks. A little over 4 hours from sign on to sign off.

Around 12.30 AM we get the wakeup call and walk down to Goulburn Loco Depot, Sign on and prep our two locos.

The train we are working ran every night and was made up of empty fuel tankers and full milk pots. But the train also has another chore and that is to deliver one of the two locos to Moss Vale, to be used to haul the morning passenger train from Moss Vale to Central. The front loco is left at Moss Vale.

We have a 44 class and a 422 and are told to point 422 in the lead.

The 422 being the better loco to work on, the driver asked if we could have the 44 lead for the short run to Moss Vale.

No chance, the Eveleigh ( Redfern ) crew has the pick of the two, and we have the 44. But this will ultimately turn out to be a good thing.

We prep the two locos, couple to and prep the train and off we go and it’s my turn to drive.

As we leave the yard I switch the headlight on.

About 10km north of Goulburn a train approaches from the opposite direction, but I can’t turn the headlight switch off. The switch on the Control stand is stuffed.

Luckily there is a master switch in the switch panel behind us.

I try to fix the headlight switch on the control stand but give up and it’s a pain getting up every time I want to turn the headlight on and off, so we just run lights out to Moss Vale.

At Moss Vale, we detach the lead engine and run it on to the engine road.

The rules are, we shut the motor down and lock the loco. But especially in the cold of winter, which it was, crews always leave the motor running and the cab heaters on.

Not us, we were not pleased with the loco assignment, so we shut the motor down and left all the doors and windows open.

With our good deed done, off we go.

It’s normally a straight through run from there to Campbelltown, but as we approach Picton, the distance and home signals are at Caution, so I slowed the train down to a crawl and as Picton station came into view, the signalman is on the platform waving us down.

When we stop, he comes over and tells us that a crew on a Down ( south bound ) train had noticed a “Hole in the road” on the up line, about 2 kms south of Douglas Park station.

A “Hole in the road” usually means one rail has a slight dip in it.

He didn’t know the extent of the “Hole” so he was giving us a Track Warning Notice with a 20 KPH speed limit.

He told us to just judge the speed when we get to the “Hole”.

We set out and as we get close where the “Hole” is supposed to be, I reduce the train speed down to around 30 KPH and we crawl along through a light fog.

Holy crap, I just see the HOLE with enough time to reduce the train speed down to under 10 KPH.

As we go over the HOLE, we hear and feel a grinding noise. It was the traction motors ( large electric motors fixed around each axle on the loco ) scraping over the gravel ballast.

Thank goodness we ended up with the 44 and a working headlight, because we would never have seen that hole till we HIT it, and even at 20 kph, I think it might have been enough to derail the 44.

The 44 cleared the hole and I opened the throttle a couple of notches, to keep rest of the train rolling slowly over the hole.

Once we cleared the hole, we were now heading up a short climb so I progressively notch up the throttle, BUT, the train is getting slower and slower.

I opened the throttle up to 8 notch ( full throttle ) and the engine is running full bore, but we simply rolled to a stand.

The driver and I checked what we could and tried a number of times and although the engine throttled up, the indication on the load meter was no more then a small amount of current was being produced. Certainly not enough to lift the train up the hill.

About 200 “YARDS” up the hill, there was a signal on the other track ( with a telephone connected to Picton ).

No Radios on trains back then ( and no mobile phones either ).

I tell the signalman we have come to a stand because of a faulty loco and he tells me he has a high wheel sitting on the platform so he will stable the train where it is and send the two locos to push us over the hill.

It’s pretty well down hill nearly all the way to Campbelltown so once over the hill we should be OK.

I told the signalman that there was a bit of fog around so I would get some detonators from the loco and place them a good braking distance behind the back of the train.

I got the detonators and walked to the guards van and told the guard the loco had failed and they had a couple of locos coming to push us over the hill.

He tells me he doesn't think anything was going to be pushing us anywhere soon and he shines his torch on the hole.

The back of the train had just cleared the hole and as the train went over the hole, the bank had collapsed under the track and there was 5 to 10 metres of rail and sleeps sitting mid air.

I walked back about a “MILE” and put down 3 dets and waited for the locos to turn up.

When the locos arrived I told the driver about the hole and he crawled forward till he could see it and that was that. No help available.

The proverbial was well and truly about to hit the fan.

Because the signalman tried to get the problem sorted in the shortest possible time by securing the High Wheel on the main, he now had the problem that he had Picton station blocked.

The only fix was to get the next train behind the high wheel, ( which there were quite a few by now ) to come down on to the back of it and push it into the Relief Siding, which would then clear the mainline, but remember, this is in the days before radios and mobile phones, so this all took time, lots of it.

Add to this that because the the Main South Up line was blocked at the hole, “Single Line Working” had to be introduced on the Main South Down line and again, this would take a few hours to set up.

Then they also had to get a track crews out to fix the hole.

Because the driver and I were going to be on for more than 8 hours ( so much for us whinging about short shifts ) we were required, by the operation rules, to notify Control, that we were likely to be operating a train beyond the safe time limit, Control would then need to organise a relief crew for us.

The fireman off the relief locos did the same.

Anyway, we were stranded and we stuffed up the running for a hell of a lot of trains.

We ended up delaying, north bound, the Southern Aurora, the Spirit of Progress, and the Morning Moss Vale train.

And south bound, we delayed the down Canberra Monaro, the Intercapital Daylight Express, the Riverina Express and a string of goods trains in both directions.

Funny thing too, as the Morning Moss Vale train went passed, all we could see was a fist being waved at us from the driver’s window.

During the morning, the Goulburn crew on the relief locos got a changeover crew but no changeover crew for us?

The Track Maintenance gang temporarily rebuilt the bank under the tracks and then held it in place with a bulldozer, allowing the two relief locos to come up behind the train and we were pushed over the hill.

From Douglas Park to Enfield yard is an easy run so we were finally were on our way home.

As we came came into Campbelltown, the signal at the Sydney end of the platform was “All On” ( at stop ) so my drive told me to pull up along side the Station Master’s office and we could find out about out change over crew.

I went in to the office and rang Delec roster clark. Delec was the Diesel and electric depot at Enfield.

I was told they didn’t know we needed to be relived?

When I finished with the phone call, the Station Master told me the signal box wanted to talk to me so I rang the box.

The signalman told me he was going to give us the SHUNT AHEAD signal and we were to pull ahead to clear the points at the southern end of the platform and Control wanted us to back into the yard and wait for relief to come out.

As they had only just found out we needed a changeover, it would be about 2 hours before a crew could get out to Campbelltown.

My mate was going to go ballistic when I told him what they wanted. And he did!

He bolted into the Station Master’s office and got onto the signalman.

He told him that at 10 hours on, we could demand a relief crew, at 11 hours on, we could tie any train up where it was and walk off it, and as we had now been on duty for 12.5 hours, he ( the signalman ) had two options.

We could tie the train up where it was, on the Main Up, and wait on the platform for our relief to arrive.

Or he and Control could give up the road and we would go non stop to Enfield yard, and that was as long as we did not see one single signal at Caution, because if we do, thats where the train stops.

We both went back into the loco cab and waited.

Didn’t take long.

The Station Master come over to the cab and told us they we going to give us the road, BUT, they had a backlog of trains trying to get into Enfield yard so they were going to run us into the Sale Yards.

The Sale Yards were where Olympic Park now stands, but we would only be about 10 to 15 minutes from Delec by Call Truck ( the railways internal taxi service ).

We got the road and went straight through to the Sale Yards, where a crew was waiting for us.

By the time we charged over, we had been on duty, at the throttle, for a little more thirteen and a half hours. The longest time I ever spent driving.

So much for our crappy 5 hour shift!! :D

The driver put in an Engine Failure Report and the next day, when I went to sign on, there was our 44 class in the LOAD BOX.

The Load Box is a shed where they disconnect the cables going to each of the 6 traction motors from the generator and they connect up these huge cables which run, via LOAD meters, then outside the shed to what can only be call the biggest kettle you have ever seen.

They run the motor for hours, testing the current output and burning off the amps in the kettle.

We never heard a thing about the failure, which meant they didn’t think we did anything wrong, but they couldn’t find a fault.

Then about 3 months later, again. as I was signing on, here is the 44 back in the Load box. It had failed again.

I never did hear what the fault was.

Working out of Enfield In the 60.s never go sick on 365 south , usualy a 36 class (pig) steam loco , was the worst job on the roster, a bloody long labour intensif shift shunting everything between enfield and Goulburn . Why ??? if you went sick on this job and when you booked back on for your next job the roster clerk had you booked on 365 South . Lol . Needles to say you gritted your teeth and did it .

When I was an acting fireman at enfield loco sheds some times we got to work in the shunt yard at enfield is someone went sick , usualy they had 54 class steam loco,s in the yard , there was an older driver Bulldog Drummond permanently rostered there for light duties he would let you do the driving and fire the loco on night shift while he slept on the cab floor using the toolbox as a pillow . This old guy was as hard as nails , there was a story when on his mainline days that when the steam compressor stopped old bulldog got out on the side of the loco on the walk way that ran along side the boiler and whack the steam chest with a coal pic to get it going again , this was on a 38 class loco going full pelt on a high wheel job .

Hi Fatso, I had a sort of similar situation, but my driver was nothing like Bulldog.

It was either my third or fourth job as an Acting Fireman.

I signed on at 6 AM at Darling Harbour yard and waited for the driver to sign on.

He too was permanently rostered to Darling Harbour, but I’m not sure it was for light duties.

About 6.30 the head shunter comes in and tells me we have some work to do.

I tell him the driver hasn’t turned up yet.

He tells me the driver has been there all night, in locker room, drunk as a skunk and leg less.

The shunter tells me I’ll be doing the driving and I inform him I’m fresh out of the acting fireman’s school and have no idea how to drive a steam engine.

He just tells me not to worry, he would teach me and by the end of the shift, he had. ( if you don’t count a number of miss shunts ).

It was a 19 class and somewhere I still have a photo of it, and the “driver”, on a sober day.

It was a very different job back then!