Powelltown Tramway

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Powelltown Tramway
Powelltown 'Express' at Gilderoy, 1914
Powelltown 'Express' at Gilderoy, 1914
Route length: more than 17 km
Gauge : 914 mm ( English 3-foot track )
Legend
   
 0.0 Yarra Junction
   
 Barrier
   
 No 1 siding
   
 Gladysdale
   
 Black Sands
   
 Reed's siding
   
 Groom's siding
   
 Three bridges
   
 Wooley's siding
   
 Gilroy
   
 United siding
   
 Feiglin's siding
   
 16.9 Powelltown
   
 The Bump Tunnel from 1925, length: 313m
   
 Trestle Bridge
   
 27.4 High lead
   
 25% gradient 415 m difference in altitude at 1600 m
   
 32.9 Ada No.2 Mill
   
 9 trestle bridges
   
 Crossroads to New Ada Mill u. New Federal Mill
   
 40.9 Starlings Gap
   
 49.9 End of track at Big Pats Creek

The Powell Town Tramway was a much longer than seventeen kilometers private narrow gauge - Waldeisenbahn of Powell Town to Yarra Junction in Victoria , Australia . It was in operation from 1913 to 1944.

location

The 3- foot (914 mm ) gauge forest railway connected the state broad-gauge railway station in Yarra Junction with a sawmill in Powelltown and ran from there to the forest areas further east. It led through a 313 m (1027 foot) long tunnel built in 1925 and over several large trestle bridges.

history

construction

The Powelltown Tramway was built in 1912-13 by the Victorian Powell Wood Process Ltd (VPWP). This was free to decide which gauge the railway should be built with. While the Australian forest railways of Colac , Gembrook and Walhalla were built with a gauge of 762 mm (2 feet 6 inches), due to the existing horse-drawn railways with wooden rails in the Powelltown area, a slightly wider gauge was chosen to carry long timber on their long timber trucks to be able to transport without reloading. The construction of the 3 and 5 tonne specified trucks was similar to that of the trucks in Western Australia , but they had a track width of 1067 mm (3 feet 6 inches). The bridges and overpasses of streams were almost identical to those in Western Australia.

business

The forest railway was used 3 times a day to transport long timber. To be on the safe side, the long timber carts were decoupled from the locomotive on the incline and brakes attached to the carts. The steam locomotive then followed at the maximum speed intended for it. Every day around 30 giant eucalyptus trees with around 70 solid meters (30,000 super feet ) of logs were cut down and sawn. In addition, there was scheduled passenger traffic in mixed passenger and freight trains.

Change of ownership

The Powell wood preservation process used by VPWP was unsuccessful. The company therefore became insolvent in 1914. The assets were taken over by the Victorian Hardwood Milling & Seasoning Company, which had far less capital than its predecessor.

Locomotives

Little Yarra, the Baldwin No. 37718 from 1912, had a tender dented in a shunting accident and badly bent railings
Powellite , the 1913 Bagnall No. 1965, had an oversized chimney with a Cheney spark extinguisher that was retrofitted during a major overhaul at the Victorian Railways Works in Newport in the late 1930s

The forest railway was initially operated with two brand-new steam locomotives specially built for it: Little Yarra , a Baldwin - 2-4-0 with factory no. 37718 from 1912 was primarily intended for mixed passenger and freight traffic. Powellite was mainly used to transport sawn timber, but was also used to transport long timber in the bush. It was only delivered in 1914, and this delay in delivery may have been the reason why the Waldbahn Squirt , an Andrew-Barclay-0-4-2ST weighing only 4 t with the factory no. 311 of 1888 used on the Warburton – Big Pats Creek Tramway . With it, the wooden bogies of the log trucks were pulled uphill into the cleared areas, which then rolled back to Powelltown into the valley after loading on a later trip, sometimes only driven by gravity.

Coffee Pot , the Kerr Stuart No. 643 from 1898, was painted green and originally had white decorative lines on the water box
Shay geared locomotive, Lima factory no. 2575 or 2576 from 1912

After the change of ownership of the Waldbahn, second-hand locomotive purchases were made: In April 1916, Coffee Pot , a Kerr-Stuart 0-4-0T locomotive with works no. 643 of 1898, from the Tasmanian Gold Mining Company in Beaconsfield , Tasmania acquired. In 1919 a Shay geared locomotive with the Lima factory no. 2575 from 1912 by Abercrombie Copper Mines Limited in Burraga , New South Wales . In 1927 another Shay geared locomotive Green Beetle with the Lima plant no. 2576 from 1912 procured from the Hoskins Steel Works in Lithgow , New South Wales, which, like its identical sister locomotive with the works no. 2575, was involved in a fire that destroyed all wooden parts and bent the frame. It was refurbished in the Powelltown workshops, with the damaged section cut out of the frame. As a result, it was a little shorter than before and offered less space in the driver's cab.

Apart from Squirt , which was withdrawn from service and dismantled in the 1930s, all steam locomotives were used until the forest railway was closed in 1944. Only Powellite was later used on the Nauru narrow-gauge railway to transport phosphate.

Todays use

The right of way of the former forest railway is now used by a 45 km long hiking trail, the Powelltown Tramway Rail Trail . It runs on private land, so that access rights are limited to the route itself. It has been removed from the list of the Victorian Heritage Register .

The bush workers hiked the 9 km long section from Big Pats to Starlings Gap on Sunday evening in order to be able to start work early Monday morning. However, on Saturday afternoon there were a few workers running to Big Pats Creek to play the weekly soccer game there. Two piles of sawdust, an old winch, and a steam boiler are all that is left to pinpoint the locations of the former bush mills along this section.

  • Train in Yarra Junction

  • Horse-drawn tram presumably on a branch line on Black Sands Creek

  • Powelltown Tramway, 1940s

  • Powelltown Tramway

  • Trestle Bridge

literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ Victorian Railways with a gauge of 1,600 mm (5 feet 3 inches)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Mike McCarthy and Frank Stamford: Powelltown Tramway Centenary 1913-2013 ISBN 978-0-909340-50-6 . Retrieved July 26, 2018.
  2. ↑ a b c Walk Into History. Map. Retrieved July 27, 2018.
  3. ^ A b c Hugh Richards: A Ride on the Bush Line - 1927. In: Victorian Railways Magazine, February 1928. Retrieved July 26, 2018.
  4. ↑ Powell Town tramway centenary. November 17, 2013. Retrieved July 26, 2018.
  5. ↑ a b c d Frank Stamford: Steam locomotives on Victorian timber tramways - Part 3. Accessed July 27, 2018.
  6. ↑ Powelltown Tramway - Trail Description. Retrieved July 26, 2018.
  7. ↑ Stamford FE, Stuckly EG, Maynard GL: Powelltown. P. 128.
  8. ↑ Heritage Inventory Number D8022-0041. Retrieved July 27, 2018.
  9. ↑ Walk into History: Big Pats Creek, Starlings Gap, ADA Tree, Powelltown. Length: 33 Kilometres.

Coordinates: 37 ° 49 ′ 57.6 ″  S , 145 ° 50 ′ 23.2 ″  E