Orbost Timber Railway Eastern Victoria 1981

Orbost town on the Snowy River, and trains being loaded there with locally sawn timber for transport to Melbourne along the now long closed line of the Victorian Railways in Eastern Victoria Australia. There is video of some trains on the section of line between Orbost and Nowa Nowa commencing with a train crossing the long wooden trestle bridge over the Snowy River flood plains. In some scenes can be heard birds singing including in one location, bell birds which are drowned out by the noise of a train as it passes and which are again are heard after the train's passage.

which transported building timber from there to Melbourne - 1981.

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• orbost
• railway
• timber
• eastern victoria
• trains

[ozrock17]

This is fantastic! Used to get the train with my brother from Orbost to Stratford and change for the Glengarry train which ran once an hour, even back then! - Thanks for the memories

[reidgck]

@ozrock17 Your comments are interesting. It must be quite some years since passenger trains ran from Orbost...

[reidgck]

@ozrock17 Back about 1981 two Orbost line wooden trestle bridges were burnt in bush fires. Some locomotives and rolling stock were trapped at Orbost and locals feared they would be taken out by road and the line closed. So locos were run out onto the bridge over the flood plains and disabled where they could not be worked on -- and the so the bridges were fixed. In another year, a train was trapped on the bridge in a Snowy River flood while water wet more than the wheels. (ARHS news magazines)..

[L1173]

Loved the footage, is there any more of east gippsland, rode the down goods in 1986. My father spent a lot of time thru the 70's and 80's as relief driver to bairnsdale and orbost when they still had crews based there. Good work catching History.

[reidgck]

@L1173 - No don't have any more of that area. At the time, the mindset tended to be that the railway would always be there, it it wasn't for that, I would likely have taken more. We don't get down East Gippsland way all that often, and that's another reason. The video was put togeter with bits and pieces from various tapes I found. I'm glad it reminds you of your father's driving days in the 1970s and 1980s on the line and the time you rode the down goods. G.R.

[DIRKI12]

Thanks Graeme fantastic footage and much appreciated as we live close by and never realised how amazing it was.

[reidgck]

@DIRKI12 - Its an amazing area alright! Rivers mountains forests, coastline and much more. -- All amazing back in 1981 and still amazing now.

[VictorianTgauge]

Would be easy to cross. I have 3 trolleys, 2 are X =VR=, 1 is home made, I do around 1000km of unused rail p.y. it is gauge convertible in seconds, seats for & extremely fuel efficient, it's light enough to lift over fences & highways. I had Bomballa in mind when I built it, but just havnt done it "yet"... I will this year. : )

[VictorianTgauge]

I am fascinated with both these lines, hence the layout I'm building Orbost 1981 1:500. (check victorian t gauge blogspot for updates) I travel past both lines at least annually on my way to summernats & stop at new places along them each time. The Bomballa line has some good places where kilometers could be traveled with minimum obstructions, the biggest problem is the hundreds of private fences over the line, some rail missing here & there & some out of gauge. The former highway crossings wou

[Boltneck77]

@ozrock17 I can tell you that the Bombala Line isn't bad condition - good enough to run a couple of trolleys on anyway. I go past it every year when I go fishing up at Bermagui. Instead of taking the coastal road, I take the road from Cann River up through Bombala - just to have a look at the line. As for the NSW end of the Tocumwal line, I couldn't tell you, probably worth a look though. In Victoria our governments are real arseholes because they rip up the lines when they close them. Pricks.

[ozrock17]

@Boltneck77 - you've just about convinced me to take a road trip down there and sus it out! The line to Bombala would be incredibly unbelievable... Anyone know if the old Tocumwal line through Jerilderie from Naranderra is still doable? would LOVE to do that

[Boltneck77]

@ozrock17 they were GREAT times....Actually just while we're talking about this, I've always wanted to do the Bombala Line in Southern New South Wales....that would be better than good - it's a good long line and still in reasonable condition too.

[ozrock17]

@reidgck Well i'm talking when we were kids so the last time i would've taken that trip would've been about 1962/63... was just as beautiful then

[ozrock17]

@Boltneck77 - Oh tell me about it! Imagine roaring between Nowa Nowa and Orbost with your clothes off!! - But yeah I know what you mean, before the Dorrigo line became way to derelict there were some bridges that had collapsed and the rail line, still intact, sunk in - i remember fearing for my life going over some of those .... Used to to do it on the Tumbarumba line too before most the line was torn up ... we had those little jiggers that you had to operate yourself -best times hey

[Boltneck77]

@ozrock17 Mate, it was the best fun you could have with your clothes on...not to mention the most dangerous too. There were small pine saplings that had spread seed over the line and little pine trees that had started growing up between the sleepers. But the most dangerous things were fallen trees and branches which would derail the train of trolleys or nearly take your head off (as it was badly overgrown in places) or bits of rail missing in the forest that people had pinched.