National Railfan Day and Passenger Truck Design

[M636C]

Saturday 4 December was suggested as a National Railfan Day in Australia, partly due to the adoption by railfans of a joke from an old Stan Freburg record "St George and the Dragon Net". The Dragon was finally arrested on a felony numbered 412 (for overacting) - hence the choice of December 4 for the date. The suggestion appears to have originated in Victoria, where the colloquial term for railfan is "Gunzel". The origin of this is obscure but may be a contraction of the term (from Western movies) "gunslinger" but the connection is not known to me.

I "celebrated" the day on a special train run from Sydney to Bathurst. The train was made up of some steel cars, two lounge cars and two dining cars from the1962 "Southern Aurora" sleeping car train and a special lounge-observation car 707, converted from a 1940 sitting car from the South Australian railways. This was, unfortunately converted to a mid train bar car, and then fitted with an observation platform, and the seating does not take full advantage of the view. The rear platform was very popular, of course.

The train was hauled by two early diesel units, 4201 (which was the first EMD unit in New South Wales, an EMD A16C, a 120 ton cab unit with the equipment of an SD9) and 4306, a Goninan built GE cab unit with a 1600HP Alco 244 engine. The GE would not have been my choice for a trip involving long 3% grades.

Overmod asked me to check the axle location on 707's trucks. The trucks have conventional axlebox horns, with mating flat surfaces on the axleboxes, with the coil springs supported by the axle box "wings" outboard of the horns.

I fought my way on to the back platform, and got a shot of the "Indian Pacific" as we departed. Major trackwork was under way and the collection of locomotives in use on work trains was quite varied - ARG 607 still in Australian National green being the least expected.

The Westbound trip went reasonably well, but by the time we detrained for a barbeque at Tarana, the GE had failed. This was not a failure of the engine but of the governor and control system, we were told. The "Central West XPT" ran through on time, with two power cars and four coaches, but most of us were eating at that time. The "Indian Pacific was scheduled to arrive just before 7pm, but was nearly an hour late and the photos were quite dark.

Our train arrived back from Bathurst with a completely silent 4306 leading. Our observation car was now coupled to 4201 which was now hauling a load of 720 tons. The most serious grade was from Lithgow up the first leg of the "Great Zig Zag", 2.5%. We rolled through Lithgow station as if it wasn't there at about 50mph, and made it to the small platform where we picked up another group who'd spent their time on the narrow gauge line built on the old zig zag.
The replacement line is known, for obvious reasons as "the ten tunnels". These have real problems with water seepage, and have slip formed concrete road beds. The resonance from the adjacent EMD 16-567C in notch 8 in these tunnels (on a 1.1% grade) was fairly impressive. The descent of the 3% grades after Katoomba was slow, partly because the GE didn't have dynamic brakes and couldn't control those on 4201. We arrived back about an hour late, in time for the last commuter train home.

A reasonable "National Railfan Day".

Peter

[Overmod]

Thanks, Peter. Wish I'd been there... but thanks to your description can feel just a bit as though I had.