Jim’s Australiana Spot – 2UE - January 8, 2012

ALL ABOARD!  Aussie Railway Folklore

DID YOU KNOW ……

• The railways were the biggest employer of Australians for over 100 years.
• The different gauges held up our development for over a century. Mark Twain commented about the two gauges between Sydney and Melbourne; ‘ I wonder what boulder that idea emerged from on some petrified legislator’s head’
• One of Jim’s heroes… the greatest Yorkshireman since James Cook … The Man Who Conquered the Mountains by building The Great Zig-Zag.

John Whitton and the GREAT ZIG ZAG Railway

Whitton was born near Wakefield, Yorkshire in 1819. At just twenty-eight, was engineer on the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincoln Railway. By 1852, at the age of thirty-three, his reputation was such that he was chosen to replace the greatest engineer of them all, Isambard Brunel, as Resident Engineer on the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway. He was appointed in 1854 to plan NSW Railways. Arrived in 1856.

His ZigZag Railway was one of the greatest engineering and construction feats of the Victorian Age. Whitton began by designing the first zigzag, which raised the line 520 feet to the summit of Lapstone Hill.  He had to design and build a three-span bridge over the Nepean River and a massive stone viaduct across Knapsack Gully.  The Bridge, named The Victoria Bridge, naturally, had three spans of 200 feet and the viaduct required seven arches and rose 126 feet at its centre. The steepest gradient here was one in thirty. The construction of this zigzag was, however, mere child’s play compared to the building of the one which was necessary on the western side of the Great Dividing Range.

The Lithgow Valley zigzag, The Great Zig-Zag, carried the line from the Clarence Tunnel down a descent of 687 feet to the valley floor in three great sweeps across the mountain sides. The gradient was one in forty-two

Construction lasted three years, from 1866 to1869, and the project was a source of fascination in the colony.   In January 1867, part of the mountain blocking the line near the first reversing station of the Great Zig-Zag, needed to be removed by blasting. This was to be the most massive explosion ever seen in Australia. Using the new process of electrical detonation 40,000 tons of rock was to be cleared in one huge explosion. Twenty-five holes were drilled thirty feet into the mountain face and over three tons of blasting powder was inserted.

In the building of this railway the colony truly came of age. No longer a quaint colonial backwater, the colony of New South Wales now had a engineering marvel to impress the world, along with all the strange plants, animals and natural wonders.

From 1869 until 1910 every train across the mountains in either direction used John Whitton’s zigzags. By 1910, however, traffic was so heavy that a new line was designed, using what became known as the ‘ten-tunnel deviation’. In 1972 a group of railway enthusiasts started to rebuild the track and then formed a Co-operative and purchased rolling stock. Trains first ran again on part of the track in 1975. The track was extended all the way to Clarence in 1988 with the aid of a Bicentennial Grant. The railway operates on weekends and in school holidays using steam engines and vintage diesel rail motors.

'Perhaps I'm Sentimental'
Jim Haynes

Perhaps I’m sentimental, but, in my mind, I seem To remember childhood journeys through a veil of smoke and steam. And, down the tunnel of time, I see a past for which I yearn, When a train trip was an adventure, a chance to live and learn. The world passed by those windows, backyards and country scenes, Just like those on the carriage walls and, in my childhood dreams, I was an adventurer, like those fettlers on trikes outback, A battler waiting to jump a freight, a traveller down life’s track. How lucky we were to be alive when a train trip meant a ride Behind an engine like a living thing, with its insides all outside. And a platform ticket for a penny was little price to pay For the joy of those reunions, or the sorrow of going away. You don’t meet many people in a car or bus or plane, But there was many a friendship made to the rhythm of a train. If you dream of steam and carriages, card games and conversation, Well, perhaps you’re sentimental too, and I’ll see you at the station.

Tune in to hear Jim on 2UE every Sunday at 12.30 pm