Australian Railway History Magazine April 2023 Back Issue

With Anzac Day coming we have pulled together two articles that shares some railway history of both world wars of the 20th century. Our first article takes us to Amiens in France where the 5th Australian Division in the big advance of August 1918 captured a L/40 German railway gun. This is the story of how the gun came to Australia, keeping souvenirs of important events is a common habit among human beings and so it was with the Great War. Many places in Australia have a war memorial and with it a centrepiece in their town square or public park like an old gun, and so it was for Australia as a country. It needed a gun as a souvenir and for a whole nation the gun had to be the biggest one available. We then review the second world war through the eyes of a Victorian Railway man who wanted to enlist but was not allowed. He however did play a vital role in the war as a much-needed engine man on the North Australian Railway. The then narrow-gauge railway was something like a wild story out of the amazon! But of course, it was here in Australia, and it shows how much Darwin and the region was on the front line but how the tracks and the trains (as well as the people) were pushed to the maximum!

In peacetime, things were still not as harmonious as statesman would have wished as we conclude our second part of the Hobart suburban system and its long planned and sad closure.