Puffing Billy Railway

Locomotive 12A on the Monbulk-creek bridge near Belgrave.

Route length:

24 km

		former narrow-gauge line to
		Upper Ferntree Gully, now a suburban railway
		Belgrave (broad gauge)
	0.0	Belgrave (narrow gauge)
	2.2	Selby
	6.0	Menzies Creek
	8.0	Clematis
	9.7	Emerald
	11.9	Nobelius
	13.6	Lakeside (Emerald Lake)
	14.8	Wright
	17.6	Cockatoo
	19.6	Fielder
	24.1	Gembrook

The Puffing Billy Railway is a narrow-gauge Australian museum railway in the Dandenongs near Melbourne . The track width is 762 mm (2 ft 6 in).

history

Gembrook train station in the 1920s

The route originally leading from Upper Ferntree Gully to Gembrook was opened in 1900 to connect local agriculture and forestry to rail traffic. It was one of four narrow-gauge lines on the Victorian Railways , which, like the Walhalla Goldfields Railway, emerged at the beginning of the 20th century. The regular operation of the railway was discontinued in 1953 after a landslide between Selby and Menzies Creek blocked the route. On October 1, 1955 , the Puffing Billy Preservation Society was founded with the aim of maintaining train traffic on the route. As a result, the association carried out trips for the Victorian Railways on weekends. In 1958, the section from Upper Ferntree Gully to Belgrave was closed, it was later restored in broad gauge (1600 mm) as part of the Melbourne suburb network. The Puffing Billy Preservation Society was only able to carry out train traffic again in 1962, when the section from Belgrave to Menzies Creek was reopened. Gradually, other sections were reopened: Emerald was reached in 1965 and Lakeside in 1975. Since October 19, 1998 , the route has been open again to Gembrook .

With the Emerald Tourist Railway Act 1977 , ownership of the line was transferred to a specially created body called the Emerald Tourist Railway Board , which consists mainly of members appointed by the Puffing Billy Preservation Society and also for the maintenance, development, marketing and the Operation of the railway is responsible.

The operation is mostly run by volunteers from the Puffing Billy Preservation Society . The aim of the association is to keep the railway as it was in the first third of the 20th century, with a focus on the early 1920s.

business

The operating center is Belgrave , where parts of the administration as well as the locomotive sheds and maintenance systems are located. Most trains start in Belgrave, go to Lakeside Station or Gembrook terminus, and then return. The railroad runs every day except on Christmas Day, with at least two and up to six announced journeys taking place every day.

The Belgrave Dinner Train runs irregularly to a former siding at Nobelius ( Nobelius Siding ), where the travelers have dinner in the former reloading shed of a tree nursery .

vehicles

1'C1 'tank locomotive in Belgrave.

Decauville locomotive

Locomotives

The museum railway has all thanked narrow gauge locomotives of the former Victorian Railways, namely six 1'C1 ' - steam locomotives and a locomotive of the type Garratt .

There are also locomotives on the railway that do not come from Victorian Railways. These include a Peckett 0-4-0ST and a Decauville 0-4-0T , both from Metropolitan Gas Company Ltd , the Melbourne gasworks. A Garratt of the NGG16 class from South Africa is refurbished in the workshop and converted from 610 mm to 762 mm gauge. The only operational obtained in Australia Transmission steam locomotive of the type Climax (built in 1928 by the Climax Manufacturing Company in USA with the serial number 1694) comes from the Forests Commission of Victoria . These machines only haul special trains.

The railway also has two narrow gauge diesel locomotives from Tasmania and Queensland , which are used when the steam locomotives do not run, for example due to the risk of forest fires.

dare

The passenger car park consists primarily of 15 semi-open NBH cars , some of which were built around 1920 specifically for the Upper Ferntree Gully – Gembrook line. There are also some closed passenger cars with compartments and saloon cars as well as 1st class cars ; the latter were procured in 1963 by the Tasmanian Mount Lyell Railway and relocated. After all, in the summer an open passenger car that was created from a freight car is also used.

The Puffing Billy Railway has representatives of many types of freight cars as well as brake cars (including a combined brake and passenger train car) from which work or museum freight trains are formed.

Web links

Commons : Puffing Billy Railway - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

-37.907472222222 145.35663333333Coordinates: 37 ° 54 ′ 26.9 ″ S , 145 ° 21 ′ 23.9 ″ E