Stations past & present

The thought for this post came from a series of events - Firstly being added as a Favourite and a Contact on Flickr, on investigation by a traindriver/railway buff who had uploaded a marvellous glass plate negative -

T125 from winkieg on Flickr

The original 1874 Beyer Peacock pattern "T" class, number 125 sporting it's "new" enlarged boiler, (1901-1906), and  tender.  The loco was scrapped in 1918. The Loco is shunting at the flour mill siding at Natimuk, which ran trailing from the down end of the yard, across Station St. and terminated near the corner of Schmidt St., taken around Natimuk in the early 1900's.

The Arapiles flour mill, then owned by Noske Brothers had been moved to the site near the railway station in 1906. In 1910 an explosion occurred which blew the engine to pieces (a new one came from Warrnambool). Then in January 1920 a combustion fire destroyed the mill, and eliminated one of the town's biggest employers. Spasmodic attempts were made to re-establish a mill, but failed.

And to this unusual night-time one of Serviceton still in operation -

Serviceton by Winkieg on Flickr

It's just after midnight at Serviceton. "New" X's, 53 & 47 have been detached from the down "jet" after their arrival from Melbourne and 960 takes the lead and readies for departure towards Adelaide. 12:21am on the 18th of March, 1978.

This in turn led me to a couple of railway related websites - 

• When there were Stations This site is about the way railways were – more or less after steam, but during the next phase of railway ‘development’ – the rationalisation. All over the country, branch lines closed, and the evidence of their existence obliterated. Some lines remain open, but the stations were razed. The signal cabins, the intricate  lattice signal masts and gantries, the staff… all gone. The photographs on the site, reflect how the stations looked in the late ’80s.

• Ross Thomson's Victorian Railway Stations Ross' photographs are from 1999 onwards.

Finally it lead to the idea of posts on the local rail lines, more on those in future posts. 

Local rail-lines

Further information and photographs at
 Victorian Railway Stations and When there were Stations and Neville Gee's "VR stations and stopping places"