Thread: what years for snowy vehicles?

IIRC 1950 model through 1974 (after that the scheme was complete).

The first vehicle listed for anything to do with Snowy Mountains is #06101169 to "Dept. Workers Housing (for Snowy Mountains Hydro Elec. Auth)" on 28/11/49.

That doesn't mean that other vehicles supplied earlier than Nov 1949 to Dept. of Supply (Commonwealth) or NSW Forestry or private sales through Monaro Trading were not used on the scheme before the vehicles were sold direct to SMHEC or SMHEA.

They were running defenders as late as 1998..

Yes but after 1974 it was merely a hydro-electricity and water supply company not an organisation constructing an iconic civil engineering project.

The really sad thing is if there was a need and motivation to build it or a similar project today, it would never get through the Greens and enviromentalists.

A old modern motor mag I have which tests a Landrover from the Snowys scheme is dated 1955.
They picked one out of a yard of nothing else other than Landrovers to test drive.
They must have been in common use by that date on the scheme.

1955 was pre the first trial of the Toyota LC in 1958 and then only by Theiss constructions not SMHEA.

About that time mid to late 1950s the SMHEA had the largest fleet of Land Rovers anywhere in the world. There were even Rover Co engineers embedded at the Grenville Motors branch at Polo Flat (Cooma) that were there to report back problems to Solihull.

I am pretty sure the SMA was using Land Cruisers late in the scheme. (These are my recollections as a pre teenage kid growing up on the Victorian side of the scheme.)

Cheers, Mick.

A lot of the Land Cruisers on the project were operated by Theiss Bros constructions and the major contractor Kaiser Walsh Perini Raymond P/L

I remember SMA still using Land Rovers when I started going down there in the early 1970s to ski.

Originally Posted by Lotz-A-Landies

A lot of the Land Cruisers on the project were operated by Theiss Bros constructions and the major contractor Kaiser Walsh Perini Raymond P/L

I remember SMA still using Land Rovers when I started going down there in the early 1970s to ski.

I am pretty certain that the cruisers that I remember had the SMA commonwealth gov't number plates on them, so i would think they were SMA vehicles rather than contractors vehicles. But as I said I was young and it was a long time ago, and I only saw what was happening around the Murray 1 & 2 operations.

Cheers, Mick.