It starts here...

Well, sort of...

Technically the Coonamble branchline commenced in the middle of Dubbo railway yard, fairly close to a large signal gantry under which trains departing Dubbo yard would pass. However, for most passengers the journey either started in the eastern dock at Dubbo station or straight off the main platform.

There were no direct passenger services from the branchline to anywhere but Dubbo, so this is also where everything finished too.  I guess my point is that - whether it was the start or the end of a journey along the Coonamble line - rail travellers passed by this point.  And no doubt many detoured to magnificent and now-closed Railway Refreshment Rooms adjacent to this location.

The following photograph shows CPH 6 resting in the eastern dock during the Labour Day long weekend in October 1985.  Well, at least I think it was 1985.  Definitely was October.  

Anyway, at this time CPH 6 was under the stewardship of the Macquarie Valley Railway Society, and was performing tourist trips to exotic locations in the Dubbo hinterland such as Geurie and Wongarbon.  Doubtless such trips just made the long weekend fly past.

I suppose it is slightly misleading to post this photograph as being indicative of the style of travel available to Eumungerie, as CPH-type railmotors were not frequent travellers along the Coonamble line.  As later posts will no doubt elaborate well past the point of eye-glazing detail, for the majority of the seven decades when regular passenger services were provided on the branch, these were hosted by locomotive-hauled carriages or larger capacity diesel rail-cars.  Sure, CPHs were used for a number of years in the middle of the 20th century, which is a story in itself worth saving for a later blog.  

In the meantime, sit back and enjoy the delightful No. 2 end of railmotor CPH No. 6.  And once you have finished, you can contemplate just how tidy a station may be kept when there are no passengers around, messing it up.