G'day All,

Adding a bit to what Bill says. I too slept in Barongarook at
Menzies Creek in winter. Did the cold wind whistle up over the saddle.
We did not trust to kerosene heaters.

14NB was bought (as scrap) from the V.R. and stored off-track at Menzies Creek.
It never was a VR sleeping car. The VR did not ever have a narrow gauge sleeping car
This does not mean that you cannot make it a sleeping car on your model railway - it just
won't be authentic.

One of these days it will be restored as a passenger car.

"Barongarook" 14NB was located off track at Menzies Crk when used as a
bunk house. I slept in it a few times in winter with a kerosene powered
heater, without suffocating or burning it down!

It was later put on bogies and is now sitting at Emerald minus the name,
beside the engine shed. It is the intention to refurbish it and return
it to traffic someday. Until then it is maintained in a weatherproof
state, with a sealed roof and red painted body. It's primarily used
these days as the control centre for the PA system on Thomas days.

Regards,

Bill Hanks



________________________________

From: LRRSA@yahoogroups.com.au [mailto:LRRSA@yahoogroups.com.au] On
Behalf Of charles schuster
Sent: Friday, 16 February 2007 10:36 AM
To: LRRSA@yahoogroups.com.au
Subject: [LRRSA] "BARONGAROOK"



Good Morning All!

Maybe some one on this Group maybe able to help me on the whereabouts,
use, and history of this VR NG - 2'6" Sleeping Car "Barongarook" NB#14?
I found an undated coloured print of this carriage in the John Buckland
Collection of Railway Photographs at the National Library, here in
Canberra, yesterday. I was unable to find anthing more than the one
nice picture of this carriage.
This sleeper could be a simple bash and an interesting addition to the
CRNG fleet?!

Regards and TYIA,

Charles Schuster,
HOLT ACT

Good Morning All!

Maybe some one on this Group maybe able to help me on the whereabouts,
use, and history of this VR NG - 2'6" Sleeping Car "Barongarook" NB#14?
I found an undated coloured print of this carriage in the John Buckland
Collection of Railway Photographs at the National Library, here in
Canberra, yesterday. I was unable to find anthing more than the one
nice picture of this carriage.
This sleeper could be a simple bash and an interesting addition to the
CRNG fleet?!

Regards and TYIA,


Charles Schuster,
HOLT ACT

Those sold on 2ft 6ins gauge may be interested in this link:

http://www.penmorfa.com/JZ/

All best wishes

John

John Browning

At 10:41 PM 13/02/2007, you wrote:

Light American engineering would have been cheaper to build and be
more readily abandoned when the traffic failed to develope as
proponents claimed it would. If traffic did build up, then the light
line could have been upgraded, saving further small but worth having
funds.

It could be said that this was applied in NSW with the construction of a number of country branches as "pioneer lines" with 60 lbs rail, no ballast and no fencing. In more recent years, some of these lines have been upgraded.

Then there was the Blacktown-Richmond line, constructed (in 1864 from memory) to almost light tramway standards, requiring the lightest of locomotives to work the line. Contemporary reports were of services having to be worked by three locomotives at one, so it is not surprising that the line was soon upgraded to take the "normal" locomotives of the time. The Yass "tramway" was similarly constructed.

Also, there were to Campbelltown-Camden and East Maitland-Morpeth branches that were originally built to be operated by Sydney suburban steam tram motors, with a match wagon so that the motor could haul normal freight wagons. Again, these linese were soon upgraded to allow the use of heavier locomotives.

Hunslet.

Hunslet.

I was looking at a Cartoscope map of Forster Tuncurry the other day &
noticed a historic rail site. The site is called The Tanks. It is
located on Second Head Reserve which is off Bennett Head Road.

I will be visiting this area in a couple of weeks time. Can any one
enlighten me with what I might find at this location.

The URL for the Cartoscope map is
www.cartoscope.com.au/maps/grt_lks/Forster.pdf

Regards
Alf

On Tue, 13 Feb 2007 11:41:49 -0000, Jim wrote:

Light American engineering would have been cheaper to build and be
more readily abandoned when the traffic failed to develope as
proponents claimed it would.

"Light engineering" (steep grades and sharp curves) was generally an
attribute of most NSWGR lines, and has been a continual problem over
the decades, hence the push for the new inland route would bypass it.

I argue that now in our post-railway era, 3ft 6in gauge would
have left us with more kilometres of open railway.

Lack of traffic is lack of traffic, no matter what the gauge.

Seriously expecting the railway to pay seems to be a modern idea,
probably based on neo-liberal economic theory.

There is nothing "neo", "liberal" or "theoretical" about it as an
economic practice.

Public shareholder value is quite different to private shareholder
value, yet the latter seems to be being applied to the former.

"Public shareholder value" is often nothing more than a subsidy to
sectional interests. Its "valuable" to the sectional interests who
benefit but not to the public at large who bear the cost of the
subsidy.

Reading the debates on the railway and tramways bills in the NSW
Parliament around the turn of the last century in often very
instructive. The building of now long closed country branch lines
(that were never an economic proposition by *any* possible measure)
often occurred at the cost of not building urban railway
infrastructure that would have still been very much in use.

Cheers,

Bill

Bill Bolton
Sydney, Australia

Frank

I agree that railway over capitalisation resulted from many sources,
with gauge being one of several contributors. Railways so
revolutionised land transport in overcomming the tyranny of distance
that cost implications were swamped by the slashed travel times.
Months on the road with a bullock team were literally cut to hours on
a train. There was little competition in performing the land
transport task. We now see the railway from a vastly different
perspective. With our different view comes comparing the railway with
concerns indiscernable during the great railway years.

Light American engineering would have been cheaper to build and be
more readily abandoned when the traffic failed to develope as
proponents claimed it would. If traffic did build up, then the light
line could have been upgraded, saving further small but worth having
funds. I argue that now in our post-railway era, 3ft 6in gauge would
have left us with more kilometres of open railway.

The railway was not seriously expected to make a proffit. Some
critiques said lines should pay their way, but in NSW Government
built lines for many reasons other than making the railway business
proffitable. Lines were highly political, often to secure votes from
areas. Many were described as developmental, in the hope they might
stimulate business. Some did some didn't. As with much British
engineering, NSW railways were built to last for a long time.
Builders could not concieve of the railway being superceeded by a
better transport technology. Gaining a line was seen as a great boost
in town prestige. Freight rates were cross-subsidised to assist
primary industry. Primary industry came to depend on cheap rates.
Passenger fares were cross-subsidised to share metropolitan benefits
with country communities, who thought they were travelling the longer
distances. The railway was seen as a mass employer. Government,
railway administrators, and communities all expected the railway to
be run as a so-called 'public service'. That was not just lip
service, but a significant ideology to be found in many spheres of
traditional Australian culture.

Seriously expecting the railway to pay seems to be a modern idea,
probably based on neo-liberal economic theory. Public shareholder
value is quite different to private shareholder value, yet the latter
seems to be being applied to the former.

Cheers
Jim

--- In LRRSA@yahoogroups.com.au, Frank Stamford <frank.stamford@...>
wrote:

Jim,

Looking at Australia as a continent isolated from every other

railway

system, I agree that 3 ft 6 in gauge would have been completely

successful

as a national railway gauge, and certainly infinitely better than

the mess

that we have been inflicted with.

However Hilton and others claim that the alleged difference in cost

between

narrow gauges and standard gauge is greatly overstated. There is

good

evidence for that - I think - in the way that vast mileages of very

light

standard-gauge-ish railways were built in the USA at very low cost,

and

then upgraded as traffic warranted. (They still didn't get the

gauge right,

as they were using gauges of 4 ft 6 in, 4 ft 8-1/2 in, 5 ft, 5 ft 6

in, and

6ft and others, but the point is they were building very cheap

railways

which were not narrow-gauge).

You correctly say that NSW railways were plunged into an enormous

capital

debt. But I do not think that was much related to the choice of

gauge, for

it was true of every state of Australia.

I agree that John Whitton grossly over-engineered the railways. The

same

was true of the early railways in Victoria and South Australia. But

the

money wasted was not in the gauge, it was in the civil engineering.

It

would have been better for the Colonial governments at the time to

have

brought in American railway engineers. That way much greater

mileages of

track could have been built quicker, and upgraded as the traffic

built up.

(The downside of that is that we would not have been left with all

the

magnificent buildings, bridges, and tunnel mouths from that era,

they would

have all either fallen down or been replaced, and all the early

locos would

have been 4-4-0s!).

By the way, I think I was just a little over-the-top in

saying "EVERY

deviation from it was an
economic DISASTER" .

Regards,

Frank




At 11:47 PM 11/02/2007, you wrote:

Frank et. al.

Given the size of the 3ft 6in gauge network in Queensland;

Tasmainia;

South Australia; Northern Teritory; Western Australia, i wonder
whether the selection of 4ft 8 1/2in was the 'Best Gauge' for
Australian railways?

I suspect that adopting standard gauge in Australia was more a

result

of a powerful engineering technician in John Whitton, and later

inter-

state politicing than technical suitability for the Australian
railway task!

Adopting standard gauge, rather than a narrower gauge, contributed

to

plunging NSW railways into enormous capital debt. A narrower gauge
would have been cheaper to build,so be easier to pay-off. A

narrower

gauge would have been cheaper to operate, so make running the

network

easier make pay. Standard gauge contributed towards crippling the
railway accounts. Until recently many NSW trains were characterised
as 'little trains running on a little railway'(S. Sharp, pers dis).
Few trains paid a return on standard gauge track. Reducing the

gauge

by 1ft 2 1/2in may well have produced a railway more in natural

scale

to the transport task that was to be performed here. In NSW

standard

gauge was an economic disaster!

John Kerr reckoned that the narrow gauge triumphed in Queensland!

The question would make an interesting counterfactual PhD thesis.

Jim Longworth

--- Frank Stamford <frank.stamford@> wrote:

Well if you are seeking the "best" gauge for a public railway

carrying

passengers and freight, I thought that question was settled in

about 1835 -

it is 1435 mm.

No doubt about that in my mind, every deviation from it was an

economic

disaster!

But all those economic disasters produced some wonderful

fascinating

material for organisations like the LRRSA to write about, and

for

numerous

societies around the world to preserve.

George W. Hilton's book "American Narrow Gauge Railways"

(Stanford

University Press, 1990) covers this subject very well In the

early

sections of that book he covers the world-wide development of

different

gauges, and goes into the economics of it very thoroughly.

Frank

Halfpilotstaff wrote:

Brunel's Broad Gauge (the REAL broad gauge...!) was 7ft, and was in
use on the Great Western Railway (and some of its branches) in
England for nearly 60yrs, until 1892 or thereabouts; in latter years
it was dual-gauged with standard to allow "compatibility" with other
lines.

By 1892 the remaining broad gauge ran from London to Penzance, with
some branches, of which I think the London-Bristol section was dual
gauge. There was also a large amount of standard gauge, some of which
had been converted from broad in the past and other sections had never
been broad. In 1892 it was decided to end the broad gauge, and all the
remaining broad-only sections were narrowed in one massive operation
that took only a few days. The broad gauge rails on the mixed gauge
track were removed piecemeal basis in the following months.

Brian Rumary, England

www.rumary.co.uk

I think it worth remembering the Australian context was very different
to other countries.

We are all attuned to thinking that Australia had a sparse network of
railways, because of our small population and vast distances.
Certainly this data from the Australian Yearbook in 1920 supports
that. The yearbook compares different countries, giving a figure of
miles of railway per 1000 square miles of land area:

Australia 8.73
India 20.16
United Kingdom 195.05
United States 89.57

Of course it is people that buy tickets and dispatch freight, not
square miles of land, so the yearbook also compared miles of railway
per 1000 persons:

Australia 4.9
India 0.12
United Kingdom 0.5
United States 2.53

So the average Australian had to support twice as much railway line as
the average American, and almost 10 times as much as the average Brit.
No wonder State governments discouraged competition! BTW, Australia
had the highest density of any of the 20 or so countries mentioned in
the article, with only Canada coming close.

OTOH India had both a low density in both categories. This combined
with low transfer costs due to low labour costs, probably explains why
India's narrow gauge lines were quite sucessful.

Michael J

Brunel's Broad Gauge (the REAL broad gauge...!) was 7ft, and was in
use on the Great Western Railway (and some of its branches) in
England for nearly 60yrs, until 1892 or thereabouts; in latter years
it was dual-gauged with standard to allow "compatibility" with other
lines.

"Red For Danger" was a book on all significant railway disasters from
the beginning of railways through to the mid-1950s. It includes such
disasters as the Tay Bridge collapse, Shrewsbury and Hawes Junction,
to name just a few. It was written by L. T. C. Rolt, who also wrote a
very comprehensive biography on Brunel.

Brunel was plagued regards the Great Western and Broad Gauge, by a
quasi-scientific heckler with the grandiose name of Dionysius
Lardner, who was always trying to prove (and always unsuccessfully)
how unsafe and generally useless Broad Gauge was in comparison to
standard gauge. Rolt makes continued references to this personage in
the Brunel biography.



--- In LRRSA@yahoogroups.com.au, "Dick Holland" <rholland@...> wrote:

Greetings,

Just as a 'throw in'. In the art gallery at Broken Hill there is a

painting of some harbour on the southern coast of England. On the
quay illustrated the rail gauge is that extreme broad gauge used by
Brunel (8ft???).

The picture is worth looking at if ever in BHQ.

Incidentally, I believe that this was regauged to standard in one

hit and done over a very short time. And, I remember reading in a
book called Red for Danger that on one occasion this broad gauge was
responsible for minimum damage/casualties in some 'corn field meet'
that took place in the latter years of its existence.

____________________________________________
Richard Holland

Regional Inspector
Far West - Broken Hill

rholland@...
Mobile : 0427 010 184
www.rspcansw.org.au


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Unless I've missed it, I can't recall anyone mentioning Russia and the
USSR to date.
According to Keith Chester (Narrow Gauge Steam Locomotives in Russia
and the Soviet Union), total USSR n.g. milage peaked at about 50,000km
by the early 1960's, mainly 750mm gauge.
There is a chapter by Sergei Dorozhkov entitled "Steam in the Swaps –
Peat Railways" and it transpires that there were several thousand
miles, again mainly 750mm-gauge, used in the peat bogs transporting
peat to electricity generating stations and industrial concerns.
For a fascinating read I can thoroughly recommend Keith's book.

Cheers Phil

On Sun, 11 Feb 2007 12:47:22 -0000, Jim Longworth wrote:

Reducing the gauge by 1ft 2 1/2in may well have produced a
railway more in natural scale to the transport task that
was to be performed here. In NSW standard gauge was an
economic disaster!

I am quite certain that Sydney region commuters will not agree with
your assertion.

Cheers,

Bill

Bill Bolton
Sydney, Australia

Lynn,



That's just how I see it happening.



Regards,

Bill Hanks



________________________________

From: LRRSA@yahoogroups.com.au [mailto:LRRSA@yahoogroups.com.au] On
Behalf Of A C Lynn Zelmer
Sent: Saturday, 10 February 2007 3:50 PM
To: LRRSA@yahoogroups.com.au
Subject: RE: [LRRSA] Narrow Gauge, an article



Bill

At least a possibility... essentially an editing task, rather than
authoring, then verifying the result with a couple of the more
knowledgeable members prior to publication.

Best wishes,
Lynn

Lynn,

It has been suggested elsewhere that a lot of what has been
mentioned this could be brought together into and article. If you
want to do a short article for the modelers, would you mind going a
bit further with the information to produce an article for LR?

Regards,

Bill Hanks

________________________________

From: <mailto:LRRSA%40yahoogroups.com.au>LRRSA@yahoogroups.com.au

<mailto:LRRSA%40yahoogroups.com.au>

[mailto:<mailto:LRRSA%40yahoogroups.com.au>LRRSA@yahoogroups.com.au

<mailto:LRRSA%40yahoogroups.com.au> ]

On Behalf Of A C Lynn Zelmer
Sent: Friday, 9 February 2007 9:52 AM
To: LRRSA Yahoo Group
Subject: [LRRSA] Narrow Gauge, an article

I'd like to do a short web article on choosing a gauge for the Narrow
Gauge modelling special interest group's web site
(www.zelmeroz.com/ngrail).

Does any contributor to the recent discussion have a difficulty with
my using properly credited quotes as part of this article?

Thanks and best wishes,
Lynn
--
CaneSIG:
<http://www.zelmeroz.com/canesig <http://www.zelmeroz.com/canesig>
http://www.zelmeroz.com/canesig <http://www.zelmeroz.com/canesig>
<<http://www.zelmeroz.com/canesig <http://www.zelmeroz.com/canesig>
http://www.zelmeroz.com/canesig <http://www.zelmeroz.com/canesig> >
A C Lynn Zelmer, Coordinator
Box 1414 Rockhampton Qld 4700 Australia
Fax: +61 7 4936 2393

--
Lynn Zelmer Fax: +61 7 4936 2393
Box 1414, Rockhampton QLD 4700 Australia
http://www.zelmeroz.com <http://www.zelmeroz.com>

wrote:

I beg to differ regarding peat railways. In Britain, there were far more 2ft
gauge peat railways than 2ft 6ins and 3ft, and in Germany, where peat railways
became an art form, 600mm gauge was generally de rigeur IIRC.

Although the majority of German peat lines are 600mm gauge, some of the bigger
systems used 900mm. There were also a few of 700mm gauge, but these seem to have
been built by Dutch companies and I think they have now all gone (700mm was a
common industrial gauge in Holland). There were also a few other odd gauges used
for peat lines, such as 750mm and 1000mm and even the really odd 880mm!

Brian Rumary, England

www.rumary.co.uk

Jim,

Looking at Australia as a continent isolated from every other railway
system, I agree that 3 ft 6 in gauge would have been completely successful
as a national railway gauge, and certainly infinitely better than the mess
that we have been inflicted with.

However Hilton and others claim that the alleged difference in cost between
narrow gauges and standard gauge is greatly overstated. There is good
evidence for that - I think - in the way that vast mileages of very light
standard-gauge-ish railways were built in the USA at very low cost, and
then upgraded as traffic warranted. (They still didn't get the gauge right,
as they were using gauges of 4 ft 6 in, 4 ft 8-1/2 in, 5 ft, 5 ft 6 in, and
6ft and others, but the point is they were building very cheap railways
which were not narrow-gauge).

You correctly say that NSW railways were plunged into an enormous capital
debt. But I do not think that was much related to the choice of gauge, for
it was true of every state of Australia.

I agree that John Whitton grossly over-engineered the railways. The same
was true of the early railways in Victoria and South Australia. But the
money wasted was not in the gauge, it was in the civil engineering. It
would have been better for the Colonial governments at the time to have
brought in American railway engineers. That way much greater mileages of
track could have been built quicker, and upgraded as the traffic built up.
(The downside of that is that we would not have been left with all the
magnificent buildings, bridges, and tunnel mouths from that era, they would
have all either fallen down or been replaced, and all the early locos would
have been 4-4-0s!).

By the way, I think I was just a little over-the-top in saying "EVERY
deviation from it was an
economic DISASTER" .

Regards,

Frank

Frank et. al.

Given the size of the 3ft 6in gauge network in Queensland; Tasmainia;
South Australia; Northern Teritory; Western Australia, i wonder
whether the selection of 4ft 8 1/2in was the 'Best Gauge' for
Australian railways?

I suspect that adopting standard gauge in Australia was more a result
of a powerful engineering technician in John Whitton, and later inter-
state politicing than technical suitability for the Australian
railway task!

Adopting standard gauge, rather than a narrower gauge, contributed to
plunging NSW railways into enormous capital debt. A narrower gauge
would have been cheaper to build,so be easier to pay-off. A narrower
gauge would have been cheaper to operate, so make running the network
easier make pay. Standard gauge contributed towards crippling the
railway accounts. Until recently many NSW trains were characterised
as 'little trains running on a little railway'(S. Sharp, pers dis).
Few trains paid a return on standard gauge track. Reducing the gauge
by 1ft 2 1/2in may well have produced a railway more in natural scale
to the transport task that was to be performed here. In NSW standard
gauge was an economic disaster!

John Kerr reckoned that the narrow gauge triumphed in Queensland!

The question would make an interesting counterfactual PhD thesis.

Jim Longworth

--- Frank Stamford <frank.stamford@...> wrote:

Well if you are seeking the "best" gauge for a public railway

carrying

passengers and freight, I thought that question was settled in

about 1835 -

it is 1435 mm.

No doubt about that in my mind, every deviation from it was an

economic

disaster!

But all those economic disasters produced some wonderful

fascinating

material for organisations like the LRRSA to write about, and for

numerous

societies around the world to preserve.

George W. Hilton's book "American Narrow Gauge Railways" (Stanford
University Press, 1990) covers this subject very well In the early
sections of that book he covers the world-wide development of

different

gauges, and goes into the economics of it very thoroughly.

Frank

--- In LRRSA@yahoogroups.com.au, Frank Stamford <frank.stamford@...>
wrote:

it is 1435 mm.

No doubt about that in my mind, every deviation from it was an economic
disaster!

Hmmm, well not sure about that. Some narrow gauge railways did make
profits, and many standard gauge lines didnt. At the end of the day
the narrower the gauge the more route miles for your buck, and the
broader the gauge the faster you could go and the bigger load you
could carry.

But all those economic disasters produced some wonderful fascinating
material for organisations like the LRRSA to write about, and for

numerous

societies around the world to preserve.

No doubt about that.

George W. Hilton's book "American Narrow Gauge Railways" (Stanford
University Press, 1990) covers this subject very well In the early
sections of that book he covers the world-wide development of different
gauges, and goes into the economics of it very thoroughly.

I don't think economics was ever the end all. Today, especially here
in Australia, we are prepared to accept cross subsidies, government
support and some cobbled together systems to try and get
telecommunications to all. A hundred years ago it was rail transport.
If you couldn't afford a standard gauge line, you made do with a
narrow gauge line, and someone paid the ongoing costs.

Cheers,

Michael

Greetings,

Just as a 'throw in'. In the art gallery at Broken Hill there is a painting of some harbour on the southern coast of England. On the quay illustrated the rail gauge is that extreme broad gauge used by Brunel (8ft???).

The picture is worth looking at if ever in BHQ.

Incidentally, I believe that this was regauged to standard in one hit and done over a very short time. And, I remember reading in a book called Red for Danger that on one occasion this broad gauge was responsible for minimum damage/casualties in some 'corn field meet' that took place in the latter years of its existence.
____________________________________________
Richard Holland

Regional Inspector
Far West - Broken Hill

rholland@rspcansw.org.au
Mobile : 0427 010 184
www.rspcansw.org.au

--- In LRRSA@yahoogroups.com.au, ceo8@... wrote:

I beg to differ regarding peat railways.

I guess I was looking at it from the other direction, peat railways
were prominent on a list of 2'6" railways. But as I've said before
2'/60cm was the "queen" of industrial rail gauges

Michael