Re: Old Railway near Albury

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> 
> The S.M. at Cudgewa was one of the best. Took a bunch of us railfans
> who had just come up on that train for a tour around the Snowy
> Mountains Project. An unforgettable experience. Such as shame the line
> closed, but hey, isn't that progress?
> 
> Les Brown.
           As a Fireman at Wodonga, I would go to work at Midnight and with
my mate, climb aboard T413 and run up to Cudgewa shunting M wagons all the
way! We would stop at the top of the steepest grades and just unlatch the
handbrakes on the 4 wheelers
[GY type] and the weght of the long bar would put enough brake against the
wheels to ensure we could stop!
	At the bottom I would walk back and the guard forward, and lift them clear
again. 413 had sandboxes fitted each end of the bogie and the vibration
used to compact the sand like concrete, and most of my trip on a bad day,
would be spent 
scooping sand into my billy and running ahead sanding the track. Sometimes 
I would just put small pieces of rock in front of the wheels. You found out
how effective that was, when the train caught you, and then stalled
[account no rocks]
             Towards the end we derailed several times each trip, and on
occasion would go back several times to relieve the same train, before they
got it out [thats with 11 hours off between stints] They held on to it
beyond what would be concidered a reasonable time, but I miss this line all
the same.
             The long steel bridge accross the Hume near Huon was
dismantled and some of it was used to replace the Dartmouth ?  bridge near
Mt Gambia. Did not bring that line much luck...despite millions of dollars
of wood chips and outher
goodies going to Portland it is not Politically important enough for a
lousy $5 mill
for standardisation.
                                         cheers Rod Young