Marrawah Tramway

Marrawah Tramway
The Spider steam locomotive before the boiler was converted in 1923
Route of the Marrawah Tramway, 1951
Route length:	45.1 km
Gauge :	1067 mm ( cape track )
Maximum slope :	25  ‰
Top speed:	19 km / h
Legend km 0 Smithton Leesville Lumming's Mill Mella (closed in 1944) 4.8 Produce Stop (3 Mile) 6.4 Four mile Old Cuba Mill Branch 8.0 Five mile Old Trowutta Mill Branch 9.7 Six mile Togari Mill (closed in 1929) 11.3 Seven Mile 14.5 Nine mile 16.1 Ten mile Wooden tramway (closed in 1937) 17.7 Eleven Mile Brittons' Tramway 22.5 Fourteen Mile Lee's Tramway (closed in 1940) Montagu River 27.4 Seventeen Mile (Bond Tier) 29.0 Eighteen Mile Bond animal mountain range Marrawah Timber Co. Welcome River Salmon River Junction Jaeger's Tramway Redpa 37.4 East Marawah (23¼ mile, closed in 1939) 45.1 Marrawah (28 Mile, closed in 1939) Red: steel rails, blue: wooden rails

The Marrawah Tramway was a 45.1 km (28 mi) long Cape gauge forest railway located near Marrawah in Tasmania . Construction began around 1911 to remove wood from the Mowbray Swamp. The forest railway was purchased by the state government in October 1913 and the steel rails were extended to Marrawah. In 1961 the railway was shut down.

construction

The groundbreaking ceremony for the line was carried out by Governor Sir Harry Barron on May 4, 1911 in Stanley . After the winter break, work was resumed in August 1911. The first railroad tracks and a new locomotive were delivered by November 1911. Geo Allen was elected director at the Tramway Co.'s annual meeting on February 22, 1912. FF Ford, the founder and also the most important shareholder of the company, had died shortly before.

At that time the tracks had been laid for a length of 13½ miles and the route up to the Montagu River at the 15½ mile stake had been completed. The section from the 19-mile stake to the 22½-mile stake was already prepared for the laying of wooden rails and it was expected that the line would reach Marrawah by the end of the year.

The railway company took over the transport of wood for Lee & Sons on the entire section of the forest railway beyond the 7½ mile stake. Britton Bros. built a wooden track about a mile and a half turn that connected to the tramway at the 9½ mile peg. In November 1911, the first load of wood was transported by train from their Xmas Hills sawmill to Pelican Point Jetty for shipment to the mainland .

vehicles

In October 1911, Lee & Sons, who had relocated the first six miles of the route from Smithton at their own risk, acquired the two-axle Spider steam locomotive and leased it to the railroad company. The fleet consisted of three four-axle bogie freight cars and twelve two-axle ballast wagons as well as wagons for the transport of agricultural and forestry products. The company is negotiating the purchase of a 12 tonne Climax locomotive for £ 1,000.

inauguration

Nine Marrawah Tramway employees ride a cart over the new construction section near Marrawah where wooden rails were used, 1931

At the beginning of February 1913, the construction of the forest railway was so advanced that it could be used for freight traffic. Regular train service between Smithton and Marrawah began on February 5, 1913. A mixed train ran once a week on the Forest Railway . From the 17-mile stake, the ride on the horse-drawn tram could be continued. Goods had to be reloaded there and passengers had to change trains. The estimated cost of the forest railway was £ 259,592, at an average cost of £ 2,998 per mile.

The forest train left Smithton every Wednesday at 9 a.m. At the same time, the horse-drawn tram left Marrawah to meet the steam train at the 17-mile stake. There are photos of the first large shipment of cheese that was transported by train on Wednesday February 5, 1913. It was 9 tons from the factories of Messrs. Moore and Gale. That day, two tons of wool, hides and skins from different owners were also transported. The cheese was shipped to Melbourne via Smithon and the other items via Stanley for shipment to Launceston.

Accidents

The Coffee Pot steam locomotive with a vertical boiler transporting logs

Derailments were common because the ground was soft and the forest railway was relocated with an eye to costs so that only slow traffic was possible. The trains were manned by one man: the engine driver heated the engine himself and put his wagons back on the rails in the event of derailments. There were no other train personnel.

Describing a derailment can provide an insight into the working conditions of the forest railway at that time: During an investigation in Smithton into the fatal accident of Arthur McMahon, a forester for Lee & Sons, Crawford Cure, the train driver of the Coffee Pot , said that he was with a load of eight logs was on the way to Leesville when an axle broke. Since it was already late, he returned to the station with the locomotive unloaded. The next morning, the logs of the derailed long timber wagon were jacked up above the damaged bogie, with the two logs suspended from a six-inch-thick beam. A replacement bogie should then be pushed under the fork of the long timber wagon. Under normal circumstances, the loads were jacked up within twenty minutes to half an hour. Unfortunately, McMahon had just removed the bolt from the bogie bearing when the load shifted and it was pushed against a stump next to the railroad track. He was already dead when Cure single-handedly raised the logs to save him.

Branches

Ford Model T converted into a rail vehicle . With the wide treads of the wheels, he could ride on both wooden and steel rails.

In Montagu, Brittons, Arthur River and Welcome, private forest railways joined the main line of the Marrawah Tramway. The Marrawah Tramway passed the Mowbray and Montagu swamps on its route from Smithton to Marrawah.

The branch line built by the Britton family ran through the Brittons Swamp and connected their sawmill to the 9¼ mile mark of the Marrawah Forest Railway. The narrow-gauge railway built by Britton cost approximately £ 2,000, a significant investment at the time. White myrtle woods were originally used as sleepers. Wood chips and pieces of wood stuffed between the sleepers served as bedding, so that the five-horse teams could transport the freight carts with up to two stacks of sawn timber without stumbling. After a few years, the sleepers were replaced by hardwood ones, and in curves the outer rails were now made of steel. Twelve loading ramps made it possible to temporarily store 24 loads of wood at the loading point on the Marrawah Tramway. The wood was then transported to the dock at Pelican Point at the mouth of the Duck River, where it was loaded onto ships going to Melbourne or Adelaide . In the winter of 1919, the Brittons saw about 2,400 cubic meters of wood a day. The Brittons also had a Ford Model T from Arthur Schmidt von Burnie converted into a rail vehicle for passenger transport.

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  The first trip with 9 tons of cheese and 2 tons of wool

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  Harlot , a converted steam truck

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  Six wheeler

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  Jaeger's Mill, Redpa

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  Coffee Pot at Leesville

Web links

• 18 photos of the Marrawah Tramway

Individual evidence

1. ^ Marrawah Tram Line. Question of Wood Renewal. In: Advocate (Burnie, Tasmania). Thursday, April 3, 1919. Page 3
2. ^ Wanderer: Railways and Tramways of the Circular Head District. In: Australian Railway Historical Bulletin. No. 168, October 1951, pp. 151-152.
3. ^ ^{A b} Nic Haygarth: Marrawah Tramway - Getting started at Brittons Swamp. November 6, 2016. Retrieved January 17, 2018.
4. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Marrawah Tramway. The Story of Circular Head's first Rail-transport system. In: Circular Head Chronicle (Stanley, Tasmania) , Wednesday, September 22, 1948. p. 6.
5. ^ Phil Britton: The Britton Family. Pp. 5-7. Britton family records.

Coordinates: 40 ° 54 ′ 36 ″  S , 144 ° 57 ′ 59.8 ″  E