Been doing a little bit of sleuthing, and of course the answer was under my nose all the time... well, in the attic anyway.
I think I have already mentioned on this blog that the whole world got a bit sadder on Monday, 22 September 1975, when passenger rail services were withdrawn from the Coonamble line.
Following that old saying, the trial separation worked and ended up in a divorce case, nine months after the cessation of rail services occurred the station at Eumungerie was formally closed. Along with 23 other similar stations across the state, the doors were closed on Monday, 24 June 1976.
What I was really after in my hunt was the disappearance of the main station building. I had a clue, as the NSW Railway Digest recorded that on 24 May 1978 tenders closed for the purchase, demolition and removal of the station building (excluding the station manager's office, staff hut and lamp room) and the shortening of the platform to 16 metres at Eumungerie.
I will stop the story right here to explain that the 'station manager's office, staff hut and lamp room' was not some three-roomed, grand edifice. It was the 18 x 12 southern platform building, described in various publications since as a small windowless room. This is incorrect too - there were two windows in the rear of the building where the station manager, staff polisher and lamp cleaner all took in the morning sun. Actually, that is all made up, except for the window bit. Here is a photo from 1980. Mighty fine windows.
Anyway, I knew the tender date but not the actual demolition date. Then I rediscovered a pile of papers I had purchased from the ARHS Bookshop some time ago. In it was an annotated diagram of the standard post-1926 Eumungerie layout.
Well dang me! Mr Observant had failed to read the scribble, which is blown up in the next photo.
Yep, it says 'Building demolished, Length platform reduced 12-7-78...'. I have my answer. I can also now pin a trip I did to Eumungerie to a couple of days after 12 July 1978, as I picked through the still warm ashes and rubble of the building. Missed it by that much!
Not sure what I would have done if I had been there on the day that the building was pushed over and torched. As a hot headed 15 year old I would like to think I would have thrown myself in front of the dozer, but I doubt it. Dozers are big.
It does clear up one thing though. I had been troubled by a (false) memory that wheat trains were operating through Eumungerie without guards vans prior to the demolition of the station. Don't know how I came up with it. Guards vans got the ' demolition and removal' order about seven years later. Sleuthing over and mystery resolved, file 154123 says so.
Cheers,
Don
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