Great works: large and small

With the 2020/21 NSW grain crop forecast at 14.8 million tonnes, including 10.8 million tonnes of wheat, there is action on the Coonamble branchline for the first time in approximately two years. 

The NSW Train Tracker Facebook page has carried reports of 8236, 48138 and 48162 working 8830 to Coonamble from Parkes on 1 October for loading. The previous mention had been on 7 July with 8049 on 8M47 railset working to Armatree. (Thank you Mr Lloyd for  both reports). So, it seems the rust will be knocked off these rails once more.

There has been a similar amount of activity on the scaled-down version of the branchline that lives in my shed.

A mid-week track possession, coinciding with the contracted electrical engineer turning up and not just eating the produce of the district, saw lots of activity in the Troy Junction to Talbragar section of the line.  Followers of the HO version will recall that trains were running at Eumungerie in August, but the lack of a bridge over the Talbragar River meant that they were not able to get back to civilisation.  This was remedied this week with the on-site erection of a Peter Boorman Workshops Howe truss rail bridge, of the fashion which graced the real railway from its opening until 1981 or so. The approaches and the trestles are from Walker Models.

I had been hoping to get at least a single Howe truss span in the space but a snappy design decision allowed me to squeeze in a second span.  Will go into that in a later post. Installation has been worrying me sick, but I finally got stuck in with the foam packing from 157 Ikea packages. There was a bit of cursing but it all turned out OK, for a novice. The result is below - 3108T, of the Wombat variety, coasts across the bridge under a 10 mph speed restriction.

There is plenty of detailing work still to come on the bridge, but before that can occur it was necesary to convince the travelling public of the safety of the bridge.  So, earlier that day the real test had been undertaken with flying colours. 

Many readers will be aware that the Sydney Harbour Bridge was stacked with sotred standard goods locos prior to opening in the 1930s, while the Hawkesbury river bridge was load tested with near-new 38 class locos in the the 1940s. The two following photos from NSW State Records records these events.

With these precedents in mind, 3065T towed four stored Wombat 30Ts onto the bridge and it didn't sink!

While all these shenanigans were going on, the electrical branch was hard at work (or cursing like they were hard at work). The result was impressive, power feeds, droppers, cable saddles nailed upside down, it went on. Around 3pm yesterday we had the first through train from Dubbo to Eumungerie. And it ran without fault! 

We are now running trains and not just shunting the yard, just in time for the harvest season.

Cheers

Don