The Panorama...

OK, after that last post all readers deserve something a little more graphic, with a little less prose.  So, its time for another Sunday Night Special.

Around the time that I snapped 4911 (see below), I also took it upon myself to trespass upon NSW Government Railway property - being one signal ladder.  Now, I am no signalling expert but I am rather partial to be considered an expert.  So, until told otherwise, I reckon I climbed the Up Home Accept - which ordinary folk would understand as the signal which allowed trains from Gilgandra to enter the station platform.  

Of course, I could be completely wrong in which case I would appreciate a correction - which I will publish with an undercurrent of churlish and petulant editorial expression.  Anyway, back to the ladder.

I reckon I hoisted myself up about 10 rungs to get this shot.  It may have taken a quarter of an hour or so.  This was far enough to give a fair horizon.  It also tested the structural integrity of the signal, which was waning to the extent that it was replaced only a couple of years later.  So, balancing carefully on a wobbly signal ladder with a near-new camera, I pressed....

Several weeks later when I collected the result from Figtree K-mart (which had a cut price developing lab) I learnt an important lesson about levelling the horizon - or not relying on railway property to be on the dead horizontal.  Still, I rather like this photograph, for a few reasons.

First, it is remarkably undisturbed.  Sure, a couple of things had been removed by 1979- like the goods shed and the 'lamp room' (aka men's toilet).  But this is pretty much Eumungerie circa 1945, if you can ignore the monstrosity of the wheat bulkhead which arrived around 1968.  Just ignore it - I do.

Second, it is nicely uncluttered.  There is no extraneous, irrelevant or over-engineered structure.  Everything in the frame does its job, just... including the signal ladder.  

Third, look at those telegraph poles.  The first has a couple of galahs perched on it, of a galah species unlike the one on the signal ladder.  They are also a curious mixture of steel and timber poles, and are quite unevenly placed.

Finally, I also like the dilapidated station building.  It wasn't really - it just needed a fine coat of paint, which it got just before it was bulldozed some years later. You can see just how nice it looked as the photograph at the top of this blog dates from the mid-1980s, after the railway painters had visited with their tins of green paint.

Looking at this photograph reminds me that when I strip away all the subjective reasons I have for wanting a nice 1:87 scale model of Eumungerie in my man cave, objectively its also a very interesting and relatively easy/forgiving modelling proposition.  And that is the lead-in to another post, in days to come.