Pulling up Central Australia Railway Bopeechee 1983

[MrBobbyDan]

It is interesting to see the old line being pulled up as I travelled with a convoy of RAAF trucks from Port Augusta to Elliot on the old Ghan in 1960. We had to travel the rest of the way to Adelaide River by road as the line was washed out in several places South of Alice Springs.

The RAAF was mining rock for the new runway in Darwin at the time and road trucking the rock North. Later there was a crusher added to the plant and most of the asphalt used was made with Adelaide River rock.

[colliecandle]

Wot ! No high vis vests, no hard hats ??? 

[gm16v149]

It's sad to see the rails pulled up like that, they should have left them there as part of history, though I suppose they were worth a lot of money as scrap.

I saw one of the locos at Marree a couple of months ago, like you say, it's in poor condition.

[InvasorEspacial007]

What a crime.

[sandletters39]

Sulzer rasp

[neppab]

Very historic documentation of a seemingly sad event.

[localcrew]

It's amazing to me how flexible the rails are once they're disconnected from the cross ties. Sleepers, I guess, in Oz.

[reidgck]

@localcrew The rails sure are flexible! They were the lighter grade of rail about 62 pounds per yard from memory.

[MrGoblin60]

Jeff Carter described the landscape around Bopeechee as being "as bare as the Moon"; hard not to agree. There's always something disturbing about a railway line being torn up but I suppose in this case it had to be done. Imagine being stranded in a train out there after the rails had warped in the heat!

[reidgck]

@MrGoblin60 The main problems apparently were washaways and sand drifts. Lack of proper ballasting did not help either. Can't recall rails being warped by the heat. They had plenty of expansion joins - unlike the new line which is amazingly continuously welded and must endure 50 degree summer heat and freezing nights in winter. There'd be lots of potential expansion and contraction there. There are pictures though of the tracks of the old line having been twisted like a corkscrew after floods.

[MrJezza31]

thats stupid we need railways not empty tracks

[zZwuselZz97]

echt klasse video !=D

[MrTangent]

Fascinating.

[monstermovieman]

wow what a cool video!

[Radioactiv666]

Madmax Train :D

[QRhuggies]

That black fella at the 4.45 mark doesn't seemed to be too worried about copping a dog spike to his body.

[reidgck]

@QRhuggies -- All the workers on that job had to be just as tough as the dogspikes

[twocan1]

The sleepers still burn well

[brimac70]

It almost seems cruel the way the rail are pulled.

[abisz123456]

@brimac70 Here they'd say: nach mir die Sandflut ;-) May the Desert come after me.