a. The Sixties Scene

26th January 2008

The Sixties witnessed many transitions in the transport world. Steam to diesel, timber to steel carriages, four wheel trucks to bogie wagons, jointed to welded rail, trams to buses, propliners to jetliners. The decade was a troubled one; most of us faced the Vietnam ballots. My birthday wasn’t drawn, thankfully. But by and large it was an optimistic and prosperous time, ending with the Moon landings. As steam disappeared the music changed too. Right up to the early Sixties the walking rhythm of both the horse and the iron horse could be heard in music. But the new generation probably never understood what Chuck Berry meant when he sang about a backwoods guitarist “strumming with the rhythm that the drivers made.”

The “big wheel” action disappeared in the Fifties, and thereafter steam was not so easily seen in the big cities. Not many remember the streamlined S class on the “Spirit”, or the three cylindered exhaust of “Heavy Harry” on a fast goods. The triple headed coal trains struggling up from Lithgow with another Standard Goods pushing behind the van were already a legend by my time. The SAR’s high wheelers were gone; the 4-4-0 S with their 6’6” driving wheels and the big Webb Pacifics with their 6’3” drivers. The only evidences of steam across the Nullarbor were the huge tenders of the Commonwealth Railways C class, stored at Port Augusta. The very first true Garratts had been laid aside in Tasmania and Western Australia, and in New Zealand the Rimutaka Incline with its central Fell rail had been replaced by a tunnel.

But much remained, and many young fellas joined the race to catch the last of steam, just as a generation before many had signed on to crew the last of the windjammers in the grain races to South Australia. It was practically all over by the end of the decade. Steam disappeared from revenue service first on the South Australian broad gauge (1966), but the last odd jobs lingered on the other systems until 1970 (QR, SAR ng and TGR), 1971 (WAGR, NZR), 1972 (VR), and 1973 (NSWGR).

A Prize	Rolling Through The Grass	Box Seat	Lanky Mikado
Very Victorian	Busy Dunolly	Overlooked Survivor	Haves And Have-Not’s
Just Hope He Sees It	Thunder Down The Back Fence	Playground For Old Engines	Diesel Disappointment
The Cab Ride	Vantage Point	Slow Moving Like Cricket	Taxpayer Funded Fun
Wet Boots	Baldwin’s Attraction	Delayed Modernisation	Colourful Diesels
Triumph Of The Humble	Scarce Tanks	Lost Traffic	Better With Diesel