The eastern leg of the Roto triangle was the most used. I spent some months
in 1973 as acting SM at Roto. (Wow!) There was a rail motor ran from
Griffith on Wed to meet the down Silver City Comet with perishable traffic
for Ivanhoe. This motor ran back to Hillston afterwards and returned the
next day to meet the up Comet and take any empty packing cases etc back to
Griffith. On both days the motor used the eastern leg. The western leg was
used by trains diverted via the branch to and from the west. This was rare
as the line was so ricketty it was only rarely used for this purpose. The
most common use was by nos 53 and 54 goods. No 53 conveyed the Hillston
bulk loading van from Darling Harbour and would leave its western loading
at Roto and head around the eastern leg to deliver it to Hillston. As it
generally came back engine andvan, it did not need to use the western leg
to reverse but ran straight into the yard. No 54 used the western leg every
week for the sole purpose of watering the fettlers houses which were
located there.
NSW has relatively few triangles as compared with Qld. Most junctions in Q
are triangular and a large number of wayside stations have reversing
triangles. Of course it is easier to put a triangle in in narrow gauge but
often these are in paddocks specially reserved for the purpose anyway where
space is not a problem whereas NSW used turntables even in remote places
such as Brewarrina, Bourke and Cobar.