Trains and locos in and around Waterfall.

As I mentioned in my introduction post, I'm a railwayman whose home depot is Waterfall station. I often take a camera to work with me, so here's a selection of photos showing some of the various trains that run around here on the Illawarra line.


When I took up at Waterfall in 2004, most of our services were run with our original double-deck EMUs, the S-sets. They were built by Commonwealth Engineering at Granville and Goninans at Newcastle, using Budd and Pullman patent stainless steel construction under licence. They're almost indestructible. Crews loved them and wanted to keep them, passengers hated them and wanted them replaced, unfortunately the passengers won. Now all our services are run with the unloved and unlovely Tangaras. S5 and S12 are seen stabled in Waterfall down yard at the end of the day.


An S-set and a Tangaras on the apron at Mortdale Maintenance Centre, which is the depot responsible for maintaining trains on the Illawarra. Tangaras were also built by Goninans.


At that time interurban services on the Illawarra to Wollongong and Kiama were run with the Comeng-built V-set double deck EMUs. V60 is seen at Cawley, between Waterfall and Helensburgh.


After the first series V-set cars were unexpectedly withdrawn from service due to severe corrosion problems the remainder were concentrated on the Northern and Western lines. They were replaced on the Illawarra by H-sets, also known as OSCars - Outer Suburban Cars. This is H3 on the crossing at the start of the single track section at Clifton. They were built by UGL at Newcastle, the successor to Goninans.


Freight trains on the Illawarra line aren't as varied as they used to be. These days the main traffic is export coal from collieries to the west of Sydney making its way to Port Kembla. The usual motive power for these trains are former NSW 82 class locos, which were built by Clyde Engineering at Braemar in NSW. They're now owned by Pacific National, which was formed out of the privatisation and merger of the National Rail Corporation and FreightCorp. They're an GM-EMD model JT42C, and are usually seen running in a four-unit consist.

More to come!

Mark.

 

A few years back there was a bit more variety in coal train workings on the Illawarra.


A pair of ex-Australian National Railways DL class locos and an 82 on a down coal train. From memory the DLs were intended for hauling relatively light, fast container trains on the easy grades of the Central Australian Railway, so they weren't too successful dragging 4500 tonne coal trains up the 1 in 40 of Como bank. The crews used to joke that the letters DL stood for "Dead Loss".




Another odd choice for hauling coal trains were these ex-Victorian Railways C-class locos, which were also intended for fast freight work. These peculiar-looking units were nicknamed "Lizards" by the local crews. Like many GM-EMD locos they seemed to make an inordinate amount of noise before doing anything useful.

The other freight traffic on the Illawarra is bulk grain to the Manildra mill at Bomaderry, and steel products from Cringila to Acacia Ridge in Queensland. These days the Manildra trains are hauled by ex-NSW 81 class locos and the steelies mainly by ex-National Rail NR class locos. But back in 2008 the Manildra contract was with Genesee and Wyoming's Australian subsidiary ARG.


The Manildra wheat train leaving Waterfall hauled by a pair of ex-NSW 422 class Clyde-GM locos in ARG livery as their 22 class. From what I've heard some of these locos have been sold and exported to South Africa.

Every now and again part of then Main South line to Albury will be shut for track work. When that happens freight trains headed from Sydney for Melbourne will run via the Illawarra instead. That usually means a procession of very long container trains made up of articulated and double-stack wagons. These next two photos were taken a few years back:





The leading unit is an ex-Victorian G class in CRT livery, the next unit is an ex-ANR CLF class loco in ARG livery, the third loco is an ex-Victorian X class in Freight Australia livery and the last is an ex-ANR CLP class loco in Queensland National livery. The CLF and CLP are both rebuilds of the original Commonwealth Railways CL class locos of the 1970s. The CLFs were intended for freight traffic, and the CLPs for passengers.

Back when the CLs were new there was no through-running of locos across state borders. So when we heard that CL1 was going to haul the "Indian Pacific" all the way to Sydney Terminal, one of my schoolmates and I decided to give ourselves the day off school to go and see it. Seeing a foreign loco in Sydney Yard was a new experience for us - well worth the trouble we got into the next day when we went back to school


More CLPs the next day.

When there is track work on the Illawarra all sorts of exotic locos can be seen on work trains.




Ex-Commonwealth Railways GM10 and ex-Victorian Railways S317 on the ballast cleaning train at Heathcote.


T385, KL80 and KL81 on a spoil train in Waterfall yard. The T class is an ex-Victorian loco, while the KLs are ex-NSW 49 class locos. All are in the livery of Chicago Freight Car Leasing
Australia.


These two are the pick of the bunch. They're ex-South Australian Railways 600 class Alco DL541s built under license by A.E. Goodwin at Auburn in Sydney. Of seven built, only three survive as locos. The other four had their engines removed and were cut down into booster units and later scrapped.

During the early 1980s a couple of 600s were leased to the NSW railway and saw a lot of service on the Illawarra. So even though it was raining heavily and nearly dark when I took this photo I was determined not to miss out, as it had been a long time since these wonderful old diesels had been to Waterfall.

Cheers,

Mark.