Re: Queensland Railways [Was: etc. etc.]

[ianst@refer.to.sig.au (Ian Staples)]

In article <1e4s43a.1kpk8lm1dcxosxN@dialup-m1-40.brisbane.netspace.net.au>, 
nevilled@netspace.net.au (Neville Duguid) wrote:
>
>(Another reason I am sceptical of the importance given to the railways
>in that regard is that when I was a boy in the 1950s, I had to travel by
>train a lot. Even though the coastal railway had for a long time
>connected Brisbane to Cairns without interruption, there was only one
>long-distance passenger train per day on the main northern line out of
>Brisbane, and it only went as far as Bundaberg. Every second day it was
>replaced by the "Rocky Mail" that went all the way to Rockhampton.  If
>you wanted to go further than that, you were back in Bourke and Wills
>Land - you had to ring all sorts of officious railway mandarins to get
>the information needed to plan your expedition so as not to end up stuck
>in the middle of nowhere with no-one able to tell you what to do next.
>Coinciding with the introduction of diesel-electric locomotives, the
>"Sunlander" service was introduced. It went all the way to Cairns.  It
>took 2 and a half days to get there, and went only once (maybe later
>twice) a week.  I seriously doubt Queensland Railways hasever 'tied the
>state together' as many historians claim).

One of us has a poor memory of this time, Nev.  :-)

I can't be sure how *easy* it was to go back and forth by train between 
Cairns and Brisbane in the 40s, but I *think* we managed it in '47 
without too much trouble (though I wasn't personally involved in the
bookings at that time :-).  Certainly some relations seemed to manage
it without problems (apart from road access to Cairns from Mossman such
as in '51(?) when the Cook Highway was cut for weeks :) in the late 40s/
early 50s when they came north every Christmas for a few weeks.

As I recall, the service was known as the Sunshine Express (some "Express"!)
before it became the Sunlander.  I certainly travelled straight through
on it in '54 when I went down to the Ekka in Bne as a guest of the RNA
along with a bunch of other country kids.  I had at least one other
return trip on it too between '47 and '54, but I can't recall the year.

The really boring thing was watching the mileage markers go by, sllowwwwly.
The damn things marked every half mile from Brisbane, so you'd look out
and see "857 1/2" then what seemed like hours later (and probably was :)
you'd see "893" or whatever.

The only real adventure on the trip was the dining car which they put on
for the section around about Mackay/Rockhampton.

Of course, later on, in the late 50s, there was the serious problem of
surviving that stretch from Gladstone to Marlborough where you could
only get that awful Rockhampton beer (Mac's, IIRC).  From Marlborough
north you were back in familiar Cairns draught territory.  (Not that
it was a worry to we sub-21 students of course. ;-)

Cheers,  Ian S.

Addendum:
The northern kids from the Charters Towers boarding schools also connected
with the service when going home for holidays.  The "Midnight horror"
departed from the Towers at 00:01 a.m. on the first day of the holidays so 
as to give us as much time as possible at home without contravening the
Qld school term regulations.  It got to Tsv about 05:30 or so -- though
that's subject to confirmation. 8-)  We sometimes had to wait 12 hours 
or more for the connection in Tsv -- I don't think the Sunshine Express/
Sunlander was *ever* on time.

ianstDELETE@THISdpi.qld.gov.au