The Steamtug Blog

I was probably about 8 when I got my first train set, and my mind was made up… I was going to grow up and be a train driver! I was ready to leave school at just 16 years old, and passing all the entrance exams was the easy part, but going into the medical was much harder. At the Victorian Railways head office in the big haunted house in Spencer street, they showed me some tiny colored lights in a mirror that were located a long, long way behind me without a problem. But when they brought out this funny book with pictures of pizzas and asked me what number it was, I couldn’t see past the anchovies and  was deemed to be color blind. When they told me I would never be a train driver, I was bitterly disappointed but after continuing on at school, I have managed to carve out a career much better than just driving trains.

Now some people find the standard HO gauge train set a little fiddly, so they opt for a larger garden railway. But this one tops the lot! Tom’s mate Ron went to a clearing sale and came home with a full size steam locomotive and set about building the ultimate “bush railway”! But 15 years later, and with Ron pushing up close to 80 years of age was having trouble keeping up with the maintenance. So Tom suggested we have a weekend playing steam trains and helping out with Ron’s toy train set.

So I escaped from work a little early on Friday afternoon and caught the train to Melbourne alighting at the station nearby to Tom’s work, and found him waiting outside to pick me up. It was a good plan which saved about 2 hours on him driving back to Geelong to pick me up. Another 3 hours across the powerstations and coal mines of Gippsland to Ron’s place buried deep in the bush and miles from anywhere. Well far enough not to get telephone reception anyway, arriving late Friday night I caught my first glimpse of the cute little loco I would be driving, in the dim light of the old shed. With excited anticipation, we lit a warming fire in her belly for the morning and sipped our beer on the footplate in the glow of the crackling fire, and thinking “It doesn’t get better than this!”

After a hearty bacon and eggs breakfast cooked up on the old wood stove in the farm house, we headed back to the shed and got a “proper” fire going before the boss, Ron arrived to micromanage our mornings work. After initial introductions, Ron loaded up the little ganger’s trolley and we jumped on and headed up to a section of line that needed mending with the dogs running along behind. It was hard work, not what I’m used to as an office jockey that goes out and tells somebody else to do it, but very rewarding and I was grateful of the opportunity to get my hands dirty.

We had a great little routine worked out. Firstly, we de-spiked the old rotten sleepers. I edged the spikes up with the bar, and Tom was ready with another flat bar that went under to get another purchase on the spike until it was loose enough for him to lift his bar and mine forcing the spike out. 4 dog spikes per sleeper. At lot easier than heavy gauge track that has 8 per sleeper!

Next we dug out the dirt around the sleeper, installed the little robust track jacks which lifted so we could slide the old sleeper out, clean up the hole and slide in the new sleeper. Next we drilled the spike holes with the little 2 stroke petrol drill, drove the new spikes in and packed up the sleeper with some gravel to give us the right height. Now here is a lesson for the boys and girls, you don’t pack the middle of the sleeper, because if it’s too high, it will break when the train goes over it! Ha… the things you learn out here in the bush!

Now it sounds like a simple procedure, but it took all morning for the 3 of us to do 8 sleepers, and Ron reminded us there were 48 that needed doing. One sleeper that came out in bits, revealing a mushy inside, and I noticed something funny moving inside the mush. It turns out it was a baby blue tongue lizard that Ron carefully dug out. He was hibernating from the cold winter inside and was quite dopey and oblivious to all the fuss. Ron being the nature lover put him in a hole under the nearby wood heap away from the hungry kookaburras laughing at us from above.

I have always been fully qualified to drive a steam train as part of my apprenticeship from years ago, but hysterical (yes… spelt correctly!) railway groups can be a funny lot with loads of petty politics, rules of hierarchy, and far too much arse kissing before you get your hands on the whistle rope.  I have driven a steam locomotive on only a few occasions, even getting a drive of a “Y” class on the main line many years ago, but the opportunity to drive a real “12 inches to the foot” scale train rarely arises. So with great excitement, I drove that little train up and down all afternoon, and boy… she has some grunt! The loco is a 2’ gauge, 0-6-2, Perry, built in Adelaide in 1951. See her take off here…  http://youtu.be/QZzzqWo5y68

After a hard days work, and many beers later we went into town and Ron shouted us dinner at the local “one hung low” Chinese restaurant, then a few more beers before bed. Over bacon and eggs again Sunday morning, we discussed doing a few more sleepers after the great effort we made doing 8 the day before (only 40 more to go!) But early in the afternoon as I was passed over a curve near the top of the hill, Ron, who was my fireman, looked behind us and noticed 3 sleepers in the middle of the curve with their inside ends curled up. We stopped and noticed the wood had been white anted out and 3 in a row was not a good thing. So we went back down and got the work trolley out again and immediately pulled the 3 bad ones out. Luckily because they were on the side of the hill, they came out very easily and were replaced in no time.

So all in all, we had replaced 17 over the weekend and had a great time doing it. I think it would be a great theme day for a team building exercise to put the work into replacing a few sleepers, in return for learning how to drive a steam locomotive, maybe for the next bonfire party perhaps?

http://youtu.be/TfBH0QOGC4g