Australian Railway History Magazine December 2023 Edizione posteriore

🎅🎄 DECEMBER ISSUE OUT NOW IN DIGITAL AND PRINT 🚂

We finish the year with a bang and a favorite branch.
This issue we celebrate the Centenary of the Gilmore to Batlow and Kunama Branch. A Failed Experiment in Repatriation by Neville Pollard. The opening of the railway from Gilmore to Batlow (and Kunama) by the New South Wales Governor, Sir Walter Davidson, on 23 March 1923 was somewhat anticlimactic; the line would not be officially handed over for another nine months so the Governor’s wife had to drive the construction engine through the celebratory ribbon. The real reason for the visit was to open the annual show; celebrations at the railway may, therefore, have been an afterthought. There was little festivity when the 22-mile (35-km) branch finally opened on 17 December; representatives of public bodies were invited to travel on the first ‘official’ service but the local newspaper did not receive advanced warning to publicise the event more widely. The branch, no longer operating, is remembered for many peculiarities.