Page 2 of Kim Thurlow's
Portfolio of Queensland Railways
Pictures from the 50's and 60's.
Wallangarra on the inland border between New South
Wales and Queensland. To the left across the platform is the 4'
8.1/2" gauge of the NSWGR. And here is the little 3' 6"
gauge train ready to depart, with a shiny Brunswick Green locomotive,
and about six beautifully made timber coaches with open vestibules.
View the interior of one of these coaches.
Just behind the thumbnail (a mark
on my original negative), is the open verandah of the first coach. The arch
roof is almost invisible against the sky.
This was the Sydney Express from Sydney to Brisbane,
the time about 10 am in the morning. From memory about mid-January
in 1962. Number 1014 is a Class BB18.1/4 4-6-2 built in 1950 at
the Vulcan Foundry, near Manchester UK. In spite of their small
driving wheels (4'3" diameter) they were quite modern locomotives,
with roller bearings and long travel valves.
The train had left Sydney about 2pm the previous day,
and slogged its way up the New England line through Muswellbrook,
Tamworth, and Armidale, to Glen Innes about six in the morning.
And then on to Wallangarra past the great Bluff Rock. Toowoomba
will be at 2.30 pm, Brisbane about 7.30.
Here too at Wallangarra, goods were laboriously shifted
from standard to narrow gauge in one of the freight sheds.
The uniformed man on the platform, is testimony to
Wallangarrra's importance as a military centre, even though the
town has a population numbering in the hundreds.