Re: Mt Gambier network - thoughts

["ben scaro" <bscaro@hotmail.com>]

Hi all

As a contribution to this discussion, the Mt Gambier freight mainly carried 
cargo tray flats for local company K&S Freighters. Apart from this, a few 
boxcars (paper products?) some cement for local use and also rakes of VPCXx 
and APCXs consigned from the Barossa line to Waurn Ponds near Geelong, 
fertiliser in AOGAs and fuel in tankcars were the main regular traffics.

Less frequently, the train sometimes included rakes of grain hoppers, and 
prior to 1990, quite a lot of sheep and cattle.

Keeping and gaining new traffic on such a service required a degree of work 
and commitment, so not surprisingly AN weren't really interested (it was a 
bit too hard for a railway whose main definition of customer service was 
shunting a rake of grain hoppers beside a silo), and one by one these 
traffics dropped off.  Stock was gone by 1990, fertiliser by 1992, and I'm 
pretty sure by the time the service ended that the fuel had bitten the dust 
too.

It's a pity that the line wasn't standardised, because it would have made a 
good little shortline for someone.  Had this been done, the only traffic 
that would have definitely ended was the cement to Waurn Ponds.  AFAIK, the 
other traffics were all locally derived.

Cheers

Ben


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