Have a rail-ly good time
Touch of Toowoomba: DownsSteam Tourist Railway and Museum
We live here ‘cos we love it!
THE volunteers at the DownsSteam Tourist Railway and Museum will open their complex this Australia Day.
They will offer rides on their vintage engines, there’ll be games, music, flag raising and heaps more.
The Chronicle dropped in this week and spoke with the blokes working on the museum’s latest restoration project – the Pride of Toowoomba.
Clyde Baker
We are working on a 1914 C16 steam engine, built in the Toowoomba Foundry.
There were 153 built up to 1914 and the Toowoomba Foundry made 15 of those.
Between 1914 and 1960 when she was decommissioned - she did more than one million miles, anywhere between here and Cairns. That’s a fair distance.
From the 1960s until 2001, she sat at a museum in Redbank, before she was moved up to Toowoomba.
She escaped the scraper’s axe whereas most of the C16s were scraped.
She is good condition, but she is missing a lot of little bits that we are restoring or building from scratch.
We’re looking at another 12 months before she is restored. You cannot buy parts because she is the only one of its kind left so we look at what we have and make new parts. Brian Playne
I was asked to fix a power supply in one of the locos.
It was supposed to be a one-day job, but three years later I am still here.
I didn’t know this place existed before they called me out for the job, but now I am here three days a week.
Jeff Smith
We have spent about $100,000 on the restoration so far and there is another $200,000 to go into.
Old trains are so different. They are exciting and there is nothing like steam power.
We bring the section cars out for our open days or for days like Australia Day, but we can only take people for a ride up and down our yard.
We are working to being able to take trips to Warwick and Stanthorpe, and out to Pittsworth and Brookstead.
The rail network in the Darling Downs is good.
Watco has taken on a contract from Queensland Rail to run grain, cattle, cotton and all that sort of stuff.
Sometimes the government has to rip-up train lines because they are not used anymore, there are fewer people in the area and there is less demand for trains.
The Darling Downs’ line was the main line to Sydney to start off with and now it will turn into a heritage line, going as far as Wallangarra.
This line is safe because they still have to get the grain up from Goondiwindi and nearby farms.
The volunteers are always busy and there is always something to do. It is very hands-on work and we would really like more volunteers.
The DownsSteam Tourist Railway and Museum will be open from 9am-3pm on Sunday. There will be a flag raising at 11.30am, free face painting from 10am and live music by the Toowoomba Ukulele group from 10.30am-1.30pm.