Australian Railway History Magazine

🎄🚂 THE DECEMBER ARH ISSUE OUT NOW IN DIGITAL AND PRINT🚂🎅
We complete our coverage of Franks Johnsons time on the Goulburn to Gunning section as the youngest District Engineer in the Department of Railways New South Wales and boy when you start reading you can see why the article is called ‘The times the have a-changed!’ Writer Peter Cokley has discovered some interesting material relating to Gold Coast Express of 1959, many of us all know about the history of the Gold Coast Motorail but the NSW railways were trying to sell weekly tourist packages long before the Motorail existed as Australia was seeing better times after the war years and the railways retooled with new equipment. Accidents happened due to equipment faults and sometimes they occurred due to miscommunication and human error. Malcolm Thompson writes on a rear end collision on the Commercial Road Viaduct station in Adelaide, July 1920 as special trains were carrying people around Adeliade for the Prince of Wales 1920 visit with his docked ship HMS Renown. This article also offers a great snap shot of suburban operations by South Australian Railways F Class tank locomotives. Who can believe that the WAGR name was cast into the bin 50 years ago as the Western Australians sought to rebrand and resell their operations with WESTRAIL. It took a while to settle (and with the agreement of the railway unions) on a paint scheme befitting the new organisation.

Lastly the ARH team wishes all our subscribers, members and readers a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, many thanks for your readership. We are looking forward to bringing you another year of Australian Railway History in 2026 for Volume 77.

All this and more in our DECEMBER issue!
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Print and digital formats available.