Chapter 4 - Work on the Railways - Rail, Tram and Bus Union of NSW
*On Wooden Rails
A Job for Life
The work on the railways takes in many of the
occupations in the broader community as well as some
that are unique to the railways. There is the full range of
trades from boilermaking, fitting and turning,
machining, mechanical and electrical, then the ‘railspecifc’
work – perway, signals, stations, footplate,
guards, station assistants, shunters and so on. Many
people joined the railways because it was a major, stable
employer with public service conditions that were
relatively good by comparison to other industries. Young
workers would follow family members into the job or be
advised by concerned parents, wanting stable and longterm
employment for their children. Alternatively, in
many country locations in particular, the railways was
one of a few employment options, along with the local
council or the post office.
Some of the down-side of the permanent and stable
employment for many rail workers include irregular and
broken shifts, working away from home for extended
periods, isolated and extreme work environments and
dangers that went with the various jobs. Another aspect
of railway employment in a range of occupations was
the specific and idiosyncratic nature of railway jobs. The
Railway Gang, Telegraph Point 1913
(Bicentennial Copying Project, State Library of NSW)
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fact that a worker’s employment experience was
immersed in practices and tasks peculiar to the railways,
rendered them vulnerable to the broader employment
market. The fear for example, of a train driver, after 30
years of driving not meeting the medical requirements
and then being exposed to a labour market that has no
call for train driver skills. The same can be said of a wide
range of jobs that are essential on the railways, but have
no direct relevance to other industries or occupational
groups. To this extent, substantial numbers of rail
workers were also ‘forced’ to remain on the railways for
the duration of their working lives.
The work has been varied, hard, dirty, dangerous, often
around broken and disruptive shift patterns. It makes no
sense to compare the ‘good old days’ with contemporary
work practices or conditions, they have changed and
they have improved in most areas, but the demands,
requirements and expectations are different. They
remain, nonetheless, highly skilled areas of work.
Whether it was operating the isolated rural signal box,
using telegraphic equipment and levers, or a
computerised console; firing up a steam locomotive or
taking the cab in the millennium train; operating
passenger services and stations from small country
towns to millions of commuters in major cities. What we
can say is that it is different, but remains equally vital
and essential to the safe and efficient running of the rail
system. What it has never been, is ‘unskilled’ or ‘low
skilled’ as it has suited some to argue.
I have argued elsewhere that there is probably nothing
more offensive, denigrating or dishonest than the label
of ‘unskilled work’. “Apart from the obvious
offensiveness, and historical abuses to justify
occupational devaluing and hence lower wages and
conditions, and the encouragement and maintenance of
craft monopolies and wage relativities between groups
of workers, the notion is a conceptual nonsense. There is
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Eveleigh
no living human being, let alone a worker (paid or
unpaid) who performs a range of complex physical and
cognitive tasks on a daily basis, who can accurately or
fairly be described as completely lacking skills or
knowledge. …..all workers are ‘skilled’. Some
vegetables,and a larger number of inanimate objects
can more confidently be classified as ‘unskilled’. “ 1
This selected sample of railway workplaces and
locations and the people who occupy them, takes our
story, from the broad political industrial settings and
relationships that provide the backdrop for the rail
industry to the more specific workplace cultures and
practices. These are the places of immense interest, the
melting pots or salad bowls of diverse ideas, people and
customs that go to create and sustain a general railway
culture, and the more specific cultural practices of
particular workplaces.
Yet, as with all cultural practice, the realms cannot be
easily or sensibly separated. They merge, collide,
conflict and wash over each other, each influencing and
affecting the other. The personalities are not left at the
workplace gate, nor does the effect of the workplace
culture remain confined. Rather, it goes with these
workers into their worlds, and in different ways, shapes
and adds to their character and talents.
112
Wellington Loco, 1920
In other regards, the dedication of special interests and
skills, is also a means of partially escaping and
navigating the harsher or less desirable aspects of work.
Somehow workers must find ways to reconcile their
primary beliefs and community cultures with the ‘alien’
work cultures. Somehow, workers have to make sense of
and become familiar with a secondary workplace culture
or set of practices that is often in stark contrast to their
primary culture and world view. This is often achieved
through engaging in '’borderland’ discourses, or ways of
surviving the world of work, while remaining true to
their identity and beliefs.
What is often evident in many workplaces is what some
writers have referred to as the development and testing
of ‘theories in use’ rather than espoused theories of
work.
often abandon the official theory (or standard practice)
as their experience demonstrates that these do not fit a
particular situation. They are constantly testing out
hunches, guesses, intuitive responses, as well as drawing
on their culture-based background and present
knowledge and experience of the work-life and the
world, in relation to what their own reality tells them
will work.
Similarly, any workplace is a site of social interaction,
where the practices, histories, language, meanings,
values, beliefs, culturally-based knowledge, experience
and practice intersect, overlap, conflict and inter-relate.
Each worker, manager, supervisor, union official,
supplier and customer, brings to this site their own
peculiar perceptions, knowledge, experiences and
expectations.
1Peter O’Connor,
Literacies, 1994 p 278
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The ‘borderlands’ at work provide a space and a means
for workers to make sense of the various practices, rules,
beliefs and values that operate within the workplace, and
to survive them. The tension is around resisting aspects
of the workplace which either contradict, or are
offensive to the workers’ cultural beliefs and values, and
even the ways the workers know that work can and
should be performed. These tensions exist between
workers and management, between different work areas
or occupational groupings and between groups of coworkers.
Thus, there are many practices at work that are ‘spaces
within spaces’.
generally or specifically identified through membership
of a particular cultural group (national, cultural, ethnic
or language groupings); other external or public
groupings (religious or political affiliations, union
membership, occupation, age, gender, neighbourhood,
or community groupings such as sporting clubs); or
those more ‘organic’ to the particular workplace setting
(general mixed groupings of co-workers, work teams,
sections or departments, work operations, job
classifications or geographic location within the
workplace). An individual worker may simultaneously
belong to and move within and between a number of
these groups or spaces. 2
Most workers know that the workplace is not likely to
value many of the practices of their community or
cultural groups, and in many instances are in direct
opposition to them. Due to these conflicts and the power
relations of the workplace, it is equally likely that these
community values and social practices will not gain full
or equitable access to the dominant or ‘official’ values,
and the social goods that go with them. In many ways,
Wollongong Station 1950
(Wollongong Library / Illawarra Historical Society)
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then, workers use a range of strategies, talents and
practices around their work as a form of self-defence
and organised resistance to offensive or threatening
aspects of the workplace, and to remaining loyal to, and
preserving primary values and cultural practices.
I have used the example elsewhere of an imaginary
aboriginal elder employed as a cleaner in a factory in the
town near where he, his family and clan live to illustrate
how we often miss the identity of the workforce, and
limit our understanding of workplace identities to often
facile job descriptions.
The example asks the question to ‘what extent can the
aboriginal elder ever be accurately described or
understood simply as a cleaner?’ This basic question
opens up many others.
What are we prepared to understand of the multiple
identities of our ‘elder’ and his influence, identity,
meanings and status in the broader community? This
person can never be adequately understood by reference
to an employee number or job classification. It is the
peculiarities, idiosyncracies and influences of our
‘elders’ that open up our investigations and
understandings of our workplaces. 3
This section of this book is about such workplaces in the
rail industry as well as the spaces rail workers have
created, and how individual workers bring to the
workplace a set of beliefs, values and practices, and how
these facilitate workplace identities and cultural
practices, and how these in turn affect the individual.
This part of the book is both a celebration and
investigation, at the rich mix of ideas, skills, expertise
and identities that are formed and re-formed, operate,
sustain and defend themselves, providing a fascinating
entrée to tapping the layers of workplace culture within
the railways. The better we understand and respect these
practices, acknowledge their existence and their
influence, the better chance there is of a closer harmony
between the ‘official’ and the ‘unofficial’ values at work
in the railways.
This is an introductory glimpse at the story of collisions
and harmonies between the various and competing
values and layers in the workplace, and how meaning is
generated, developed and modified through these
collisions and harmonies. It is also the changing story
from the secure ‘job for life’ to a more destabilised and
an predictable world that still holds some promises and
not others.
2Peter O’Connor,
3Peter O’Connor,
Smart
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114
Driver Vince Waters (Driver for 50 years) on the Wyong Turntable (1930s)
*On Wooden Rails
On the Footplate
Drivers, Firemen and The Loco
The first Australian locomotive drivers were almost
entirely from Britain. In NSW the most notable of these
was the English-trained William Sixsmith, who drove
the first locomotive from Sydney to Parramatta in
1855.Another well-known name from this era was the
Scottish driver, John Heron, who worked on the
Glasgow and South Western Railway. The modern
commuter train from the Blue Mountains, the ‘Fish’
(still followed by its companion the ‘chips), perpetuates
his memory. A fellow Scot, George McKenzie, was a
driver in Scotland, then South Africa before coming to
New South Wales. McKenzie was also to become a work
colleague in the Bathurst rail yards, and ultimately Ben
Chifley’s father-in-law. 1 Many of the early overseas
drivers seemed to take a colonial journey through the
railways, coming to Australia via India, South Africa,
Canada and even the United States. From the 1870s the
colonial railways increasingly trained their own drivers.
Drivers have always seen themselves as a bit special –
aloof and indispensable. While other workers lay claim
to their vital role in the operations of the railways,
drivers are probably most passionate in maintaining that
‘you can’t run the trains without a driver’.
Current drivers still express the view that when they
came on to the job, drivers were well respected –
uniform was overalls and the black cap – the suit had
gone. They recall some of the ‘old boys’, however,
would still wear the suit and tie. As Ray Cross recalls his
firing days in the 1960s– “some of the blokes I fired for
at Broadmeadow – still wore the suit and tie with the
sweat band around the collars. Some of them were
cranky old buggers.” 2
In addition to other social and cultural activity of train
drivers, the significance of the suit was enshrined in the
formation at Lithgow and other locations of a Loco Suit
Club. As the name suggests, it was established for
drivers to put aside a portion of their wages towards the
purchase of a new suit.
Recruitment and Advancement through the Ranks
Bruce Heinzel – joined the NSWGR in Parkes in 1966,
spending a year on the station before transferring to
Loco, and currently works out of Newcastle. Bruce
1 David Day, Chifley, op.cit., Pp83-85
2 Interview with Ray Cross, April 2005
3 Employment record for Albert Horton
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Driver and fireman on the restored 2705
plans to retire in 2 years, giving him over 40 years
service. He remembers always watching trains over the
back fence – and at the time of seeking a secure job,
knew that it would either be the PMG, local Council or
railways. Chances were he would follow his grandfather
(Albert Horton) into the railways. It was almost a
handing over of the staff, with Albert retiring from
service in 1958, after joining in 1911.
Albert Horton’s employment record shows his service at
Wellington, Junee, Parkes and Dubbo, and finally at the
Eveleigh
‘lilywhite’ from the strike of 1917, where it cites him as
being ‘Dismissed by Proclamation’ on 6 August 1917,
and re-employed on 18 October. Albert Horton never
progressed to ‘driver’ – being employed as Cleaner,
Fireman and Fitter’s Assistant for his career. 3
The recruitment processes didn’t seem particularly
rigorous during most of last century, with rail workers
variously describing approaching the local station
master or inspector, or member of parliament, or
someone who knew someone.
*On Wooden Rails
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As Bruce described the procedure at Parkes in the
1960s: “You’d go and see the foreman, pissed in a bottle,
bend down touch your toes and show you where the wild
goose goes.” 4 Mark Sheargold has a similar memory of
attending the old Railway Institute at Devonshire Street
in the 1970s, “when we got there the instructor was
writing these words on the board – ‘station’, ‘train’, and
the like – then we were given a blank sheet of paper and
asked to write them down …. this was the spelling test.”
Or when there was major upgrading work between
Parkes and Broken Hill during the 1970s,
“ Per way Inspectors would meet the immigrants as they
arrived – look at their hands – ‘yep go that way’ – sent
them out in train loads in gangs of two or three hundred
people. Most couldn’t speak a word of English, or
communicate with each other…. they were from all
over.” 5
However, once accepted in to the railways, strict
standards, hierarchy and codes of advancement applied.
All drivers began their careers as locomotive cleaners.
They had to be at least 5 feet six inches tall, literate and
without major physical impairment, especially in
relation to sight and hearing, and had to be of ‘good
character’. They were usually appointed as cleaners in
their late teens or early twenties, and once appointed
would be paid a labourer’s wages for the next two to four
years, or at least for the obligatory 500 hours of
cleaning.
Cleaning work was rough, hard, dirty and monotonous –
but the carrot was the advancement at the end of it –
moving closer to the footplate and becoming a driver.
After serving his time as a cleaner, a man became
eligible for promotion to third class fireman, but was
only promoted if a vacancy became available.
Ray Cross retired from driving in 2003, after 44 years on
the job. He joined in 1959, working the steam engines ,
and always wanted to be a train driver. In 1958 he went
to get a job on South Maitland Railway, but with the
downturn in coal there were no jobs. He wrote to Tyrell
House (The ‘pie shop’ , NSWGR admin in Newcastle).
Ray still drives as a volunteer for the Transport Museum
He remembers his first impressions of the job. “The first
day I walked into Port Waratah roundhouse with my
parcel of overhauls and gear (you had to buy your own
gear) – and the shed was full of steam engines – I
thought this ‘ll do me – I cleaned for 18 months – too
4 Interview with Bruce Heinzel, April 2005
5 Interview with Mark Sheargold, April 2005
6 Interview with Ray Cross, April, 2005
7 Mark Sheargold, op.cit
116
young. The Head Cleaner - Les Stanley – ‘Cheeky
Molly’ – in return for me bringing him in the Daily
Telegraph, he would give me engine number painting –
paint white over brass numbers. This paid a little more
(maybe threepence more) . My first pay was about 2 or
3 pounds – with my second pay I bought an electric
train set – much to my mothers’ horror.” 6
In describing the advancement process, Ray spent his
first 18 months cleaning in the shed. “You’d have a
scraper and kerosene…. and get under the train and
clean the muck off, – clean off the roads and motion
gear, and steam spraying – no eye protection – with stuff
going everywhere. Then I was promoted to acting
fireman, then taught to drive in 1963 as a fireman. Your
mate taught you to drive. For trainee engineman, there
were height and weight specifications across the
industry then, had to be above height and weight in all
areas of the industry– you got the fob watch as acting
driver, but had to hand it in when you left.”
Mark Sheargold, after working on the perway between
Darnick and Broken Hill, and briefly on the buses in
Sydney, became a trainee engineman at Parkes. “ the
first 500 hours was spent cleaning, painting assisting
shed blokes, steam spraying of locos, call boy (peddle
15km to wake one then across town to wake another. I
then became assistant engineman on the loco – started
driving mainline in 1984 Class 5 (also qualified for
passenger working) – so it was a reasonably rapid
progression. Did two car diesel passenger, high speed
freight, coal working, wide variety of work – always a
pleasure to come to work because of not knowing what
you would be doing the next day.” 7
Fireman Ray Cross, 1963
*On Wooden Rails
As was mentioned in the section on Prime Minister Ben
Chifley, the well touted ‘rapid advancement’ of Chifley
from Shop Boy to driver took some eleven years. Former
AFULE and RTBU President, Bob Plain describes a
similar progression of some fourteen years from starting
as a Call Boy at Eveleigh in 1960 to becoming a fully
qualified driver of electric trains at Flemington in 1974. 8
A part of the rationale always offered for the long
‘apprenticeship’ was to gain a detailed and intimate
knowledge of the locomotive and its workings.
It was customary for four cleaners to be assigned to an
engine. Two would clean the boiler brasses, the buffer
and the driving wheels. The rest of the engine – the
running wheels, coupling rods and framing – would be
done by the others. “The unpainted steel was rubbed
with emery paper and then smeared with vaseline.
Sponges were used instead of emery paper in cleaning
the painted portions. The worst part was cleaning out
the impurities which accumulated in the boiler; to do
this a cleaner had to get inside it. …Repetitive as the
work was, cleaning was essential to the running of the
engines. Dirt and grime built up quickly on their moving
parts. The axle boxes, cranks, motion bars and
eccentrics were most vulnerable. An engine which was
not properly looked after soon needed costly repairs.” 9
Fred Grady, a driver for 42 years – mostly at Goulburn,
did his probation at Moree. “Here I first run up against
my first old cranky charge man a Mr Schultz. When we
had done our 2 hours of safe working we had to go
cleaning and we ducked off early to go to the barracks,
get cleaned up and catch the daylight passenger train
back to Moree , if we had to wait to knock off at 4.30pm
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
then we had no chance of getting home early and we had
to wait till early next morning to catch the Moree mail
home, well this day old Shultz caught us in the barracks
cleaning up and summarily marched us back up to the
loco depot where we were dressed down by the district
manager, a Mr George Travis, and then let go but of
course we had missed our ride home.” 10
Fred also describes some of the friendly banter between
the footplate and the cleaners. “We took a green 38 class
out of Eveleigh one morning on No15 Riverina Express
and written on the side in chalk by some bright eyed
cleaner was the following ‘driver, driver much too slow
be like Elvis and go man go’. Well Jack [Spence, driver]
must have thought hard and long because the next time
we were going into Eveleigh he wrote on the side of the
38 class ‘cleaner, cleaner not so bright make it shine like
a light’. All for a good laugh.” 11
On the Job
Even a rudimentary understanding of the workings of a
steam locomotive tells that the work was hard, skilful
and demanding. Essential to the smooth running of the
train was the experience and know how of the driver and
fireman in combining as a team, each performing their
range of roles in ways that ensured the safeworking and
on-time running. The relationship and expertise on the
footplate could make a journey successful and enjoyable
for all concerned or a nightmare.
From the preliminary checks and examination of the
brakes and running gear, to getting the water levels right
and the fire built up properly, adjusting the safety valves
and reading of the steam pressure. Drivers relied on their
firemen to maintain appropriate steam levels for the
conditions and the locomotive, and the skilled fireman
would anticipate both the peculiarities of the loco, the
conditions of the journey and how the driver would be
working the locomotive. The building of the fire
required precision, so that the new coal could be placed
correctly and that it burned evenly. The type of coal on
the tender also had to be taken into account, both in
terms of quality and the amount of fines. If it contained
a lot of fines, not only would they be difficult to place on
the firebars, but the draft would suck them through the
tubes and out the funnel, or create a hole in the fire bed,
and the fire would not be properly activated.
8Interview with Bob Plain, October, 2002
9James Docherty, The Rise of Railway Unionism: 1880-1905, Unpublished Masters Thesis, Australian National University,
1973, p. 7
10Fred Grady, correspondence and personal historical notes
11 Ibid
*On Wooden Rails
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In addition to watching the road ahead, and keeping a
close watch on steam and air pressure, and water levels,
the driver had to skillfully operate the regulator, the
valve wheel or lever, and the brake valve. Notching up
the gear and opening the regulator at speed on the level,
then approaching a bank and gradually opening the
valve gear to increase valve travel and tractive effort,
maintaining the right compression and listening to the
familiar sound and beat of the pistons, and keeping the
emission of steam through the smoke box in correct
proportion, then determining and utilising the right
brake pressure. These were all a routine part of keeping
the locomotive running and stopping smoothly and
without incident.
“It soon became apparent to an experienced driver
whether or not he had been allocated a good fireman.
Likewise a fireman soon discovered whether or not he
was firing for a good driver, one who handled the
locomotive in a way that did not make the fireman’s job
too difficult. …..If the driver worked a locomotive too
hard up a bank and used so much steam that the water
level fell and, if the fireman had to start up the second
injector to maintain water level, the situation would
rapidly worsen.” 12
Firing the engine, like any job required its own knowhow,
and was required to be ‘lit up’ by the fire-lighter’s
mate several hours before the locomotive was due out on
the road. The fire would be established before the
fireman arrived. The fireman would sign the shed
register, then make his way to the engine to check its
fire, water gauge and sand box (the sand was used for
braking and traction). He would then clean out the ash
pan and make sure that the lamps were cleaned and
118
trimmed. The main duty of firing required its own skills,
and would need to build and maintain different types of
fires for different engines and loads.
“The firing of a railway locomotive is a job of precision
and a highly developed skill rather than of heavy
manual labour. There are no more than a few pounds of
coal in each shovelful conveyed into the firebox through
a fairly narrow door, and it needs practice before you
acquire the knack.” 13
Ray Cross describes the work in the cab of a steam train
simply as “spartan, hot and dirty – a normal routine
would be that you’d sign on, get your kit (kerosene
lamps ,flare lamps, shovel and bucket, marker lamps),
the fireman would oil it, get under the engine and oil
it…driver would go around the engine check it, put her
on the turntable – clean the cab – with cloth and
kerosene, wash it down with soap and water, hose it off.
I used to get phenol out of the stores for the glass.” 14
Both Ray Cross, who started in 1959 and Bruce Heinzel,
in 1966 (and fired for Ray ) agreed that what makes a
good driver –is not only someone who knew the road
and the loco but a “bloke who looked after his firemen….
there are drivers and drovers – if you didn’t look after
your fireman you’d defeat yourself – ‘podgers’ would
flog their fireman – Bruce and I spent 12 years working
together. It’s a close relationship”.
The mechanics may have changed in time, and the cabs
may be more comfortable. The cabs of modern
locomotives may not be noisy and draughty, or filled
with coal dust and ride like a mountain goat, but the
skills and know how in operating them remains as high
as they ever were. If people believe that the job on the
footplate is easy or without high risk, requiring a
vigilance and an intimate understanding of the loco, the
track, the load and various other factors, they simply
don’t understand the job. They don’t understand the
intricacies and expertise involved in properly and
effectively operating these beasts on a regular basis in
ways that protect the machine and its passengers or
cargo, keep it on the track and safely on its journey
Mark Sheargold, now working for Pacific National
(previously FreightCorp) in the Hunter Valley doing coal
freight work, provides some cautionary reflections on
recent past conditions and changes. “In terms of
conditions – how quickly we forget – now hours are
regulated. When I first went to Broadmeadow, I worked
84 consecutive days without a day off.
12 Eric Adam, No Fear of Change: Or Learning to Live with change, Iron Horse Press, Sydney, 2001 p43
13 N. McKillop – How I became an Engine Driver, London 1953, p 13
14 Ray Cross, op.cit.
*On Wooden Rails
Trains were pulling 600 tons, and now haul up to 11,000
tons, the work has been segregated into business groups
and the number of workers has gone from about 780
train crew to now about 290.
Job itself hasn’t changed much – empty coal train fill it
and return – but the way we do it has changed – one
man crewing will change it further – also the
interactions between crews has changed over this time –
you don’t have the meal room discussions we used to
have – with 30 or 40 people – now lucky if you see 3 or
4 people per shift. Its more isolated, and workers are
possibly more guarded than previously.”
Peter Sawtell, CountryLink Xplorer driver from Werris
Creek, who recently celebrated 50 years on the job,
remembers the thriving activity around Werris Creek
when it employed hundreds of rail workers. He also
remembers some of the old conditions, such as one week
in 1967when he worked 132 hours in the week and
received $192 for his trouble. 15
A lot of the older drivers make the point that the current
lot don’t know they’re alive, with air conditioning and
CDs. They recall the dust and the heat and the
discomfort, both in the cab and the barracks. There are
accounts of the extreme heat in the cabs, well over 100
degrees, the hot winds, matched by equally extreme cold
conditions. Many recall the barracks either being too hot
or too cold to ever be comfortable, and often having to
wrap clothing around their feet to keep warm at night.
Becoming a Competent Driver
I have theorised elsewhere that a truly competent and
expert worker is one that not only has the training and
acquired skills, knowledge and know-how, but has an
instinctive or intuitive feel or sense for the work. This is
in contrast to some of the minimalist concepts of
mediocrity as competency in vogue in much of
contemporary vocational education and training. This
theory seems to come to full living dimensions with
most jobs on the railways, and a better example could
not be provided by the progression to the footplate. Not
everyone in the job becomes a ‘good’ driver, just as not
every practising GP becomes a ‘good’ doctor. There are
attributes that set the two aside – what a number of
drivers and others have described matter-of-factly as the
drivers and the drovers.
The recent Minister for Transport Services and former
trainee engineman, Michael Costa scoffs at the idea of
the time taken to fully join the driver’s ranks. He
15 Northern Daily Leader, January 31, 2005
16 Interview with Michael Costa, June 2005
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maintains that it is mostly a self-serving craft protection
to justify status and wages. He views the time taken to
qualify as a driver, compared to some of the practices
and skill levels demonstrated on the job, as a ‘joke’, or
by implication a ‘rort’. He cites examples of this from
his brief time in the industry, and claims that the changes
to driver competency qualifications under his
stewardship as Minister were a necessary and overdue
reform.
“When I started as a trainee engineman, it took up to
seven years to qualify, …the first twelve months were
spent cleaning,… ‘made you a better engineman’– I just
couldn’t accept this …the enginemen tended to be the
white Anglos – I was firing for blokes with the attitude
of ‘elitism’ and stories about how they were a level of a
crown sergeant of police,… there was a real culture
around that stuff, a lot of blokes I was with were straight
out of the steam era.“ 16
It should be noted that this practice of lengthy
advancement from cleaner to qualified driver served a
number of purposes. Certainly it bestowed a status as the
‘aristocracy of the ranks’ among the relatively well paid
drivers. More importantly, and well in advance of the
modern management enthusiasm for ‘workplace
flexibility and multi-skilling’ it provided the employer
with a pool of workers that could be used for a range of
*On Wooden Rails
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functions at will, with acting fireman and fireman,
shunting and performing driving duties as required. The
practice also pre-dates the more contemporary concept
of recognising and paying employees for the skills
acquired, instead having the ‘flexibility’ to pay only for
skills as they were called upon. Drivers and firemen
were routinely demoted to lower ranks and wages as
demand changed. In addition to this, the time spent in a
particular area in the hierarchy was determined as much
by job openings at the next level as meeting the
competency requirements of the tasks. Put more simply,
these were not drivers ‘rorts’, but employers rorting, or
taking full advantage of the system at their disposal.
The enthusiasm with meeting driver shortfalls by
‘streamlining’ driver training has short term attractions
to employers in filling staffing shortfalls, and for
workers advancing more rapidly to the driver ranks. A
caution in all of this can be found in reference to some
of the older practices and the modern requirements of
the job. One risk is that employers will use the
‘streamlining’ to attempt to further devalue the job,
arguing that two year qualifications are worth less than
previous qualifications. It has the potential of also
seeking a mediocre level of competence and not
acknowledge the range of skills and knowledge required
of the job. A modern world class rail system requires
highly skilled and experienced drivers, perhaps qualified
to a point somewhere between the old advancement
practices and the new ‘supermarket’ skills approach. It
will need a strong pool of train ‘drivers’ rather than
‘drovers’.
The experienced drivers interviewed all share a concern
about the new driver training regime. They are
concerned that it is merely basic ‘technical’ training
without an understanding of the locomotives or
operating conditions.
Mark Sheargold summarises some of these concerns.
“Preparing and training to become a competent driver
now compares in two different ways – it is worse now –
then you matched up with a driver who taught you how
to drive, you received instruction from drivers,
inspectors and the railway institute.
Now it is more about competency-based tick-offs,
competent drivers take years – difference is between
‘drivers’ and ‘drovers’ – a driver knows how to operate
the train, knows how to get the most efficient working
from the train – not driving off paper or gauges - these
are the ‘drovers’.
17 Interview with Frank Graham, May 2005
120
The road knowledge, the know how is missing– now
training is by the ‘book’ rather than instinct, intuition
and experience. Previously the driver could spend the
time to teach a fireman. Skills that kept it running –
enthusiasm, liking the job.”
Frank Graham (father of current RailCorp CEO Vince
Graham) became a trainee engineman just after WWII,
in Mudgee , then moved to Penrith where he was a driver
until he retired in 1983. Frank recalls Ben Chifley
regularly visiting Penrith at his ‘office’ at the Red Cow
– a local pub across from the railway station. Chifley
would turn up regularly to meet with constituents over a
drink.
He also fondly recalls the experience and sharing of
knowledge from some of the drivers he fired for. Frank
had to undertake the usual formal training, and
progression from cleaning through to the footplate, and
remembers well the lengthy formal training and
examinations required when the electric trains were
introduced. The better education, though was from the
older drivers. “There was this one bloke who had
returned from the war – he wouldn’t talk much in the
cab, but when we got to barracks and he’d had a few
beers, he would explain the detailed workings of every
part of the loco… he really knew his stuff.” 17
Some Moments to Remember or Forget
Frank Graham’s memories are that he always thought
the job was good and mostly things moved along O.K,
‘but you’d have good trips and bad trips’, and there were
a lot of close calls (and some too close). One aspect of
the job that was particularly unsettling were fatalities or
serious accidents.
Fireman and Driver of 2705
*On Wooden Rails
Frank’s first fatality was “an old bloke who lived at the
old men’s home at Lidcombe. This one day, he’d
obviously had too much grog and slept it off in a
carriage. I came around the bend, and he was just under
the fly-over… he must have felt the rumble, because he
just turned around to look and we hit him.” The official
response is also telling of the practices and attitudes of
the time. “I sang out to the Porter at Strathfield to get
the police and an ambulance….a short while later the
brass arrived, the gold braid, and said ‘traffic have said
that if the body is clear of the line then proceed.”
Shortly after that fatality, we were coming out from
Clyde to Auburn, and as we approached saw this woman
on the edge of the platform. The bloke I was with said, ‘I
wish they wouldn’t stand so close…then as we were
coming up to the platform, she just threw herself
sideways in front of the train. We learned later that she
had recently lost a baby and her husband blamed her for
that and was giving her a lot of trouble. Not long after
he came to the railways and tried to sue them for her
death.” 18
Frank was also the AFULE Sub-Branch representative at
Penrith for a number of years. “I gave it away
eventually, ‘too much nonsense and internal politics,
and I don’t know why, I just didn’t get on with Bernie
Willingale, just something about him, so I let someone
else have a go.”
On a lighter note, Fred Grady recalls some of the
running practices as less than ideal.
“On the express steam hauled passenger and mail trains
it was very common for drivers to travel from Moss Vale
to Goulburn without putting the brakes on and they
would have the steam drifting pilot gauge on 10 to 15
Colin Heinzel riding the loco
18 Interview with Frank Graham, op.cit.
19 Fred Grady, op.cit.
20 Bruce Heinzel, op.cit.
21 Fred Grady, op.cit.
22 Frank Graham, op.cit.
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
lbs running down the grades. The story goes that the
station staff never had to sweep the up platform at
Campbelltown as the express drivers kept it clean, I
have no doubt this was correct as I saw the speed they
maintained, they would push the 38’s down to the dam
after the pipeline and set up the pilot drifting gauge and
let’ em go.” 19
Bruce Heinzel also remembers circumstances requiring
creative repair work. “I was up front reading a dirty
book, guard was reading a dirty book There was a trike
on the line near Tottenham filled with sleepers and
fettlers – we weren’t able to stop, but when they saw us,
they cleared off – then bang – there was stuff
everywhere. The cow catcher was bent down and
wouldn’t go over the interlocking – so we got the rope
out and tie it round the homestead – backed her back
and bend it back - it worked and on we went.” 20
There was time for play
After Jack Spence, Fred Grady fired for a returned
digger, special class driver Robert Gordon Smith, who
he described as a ‘darn good bloke but we bent the rules
a lot to suit ourselves’.
“Bob [Robert Gordon Smith] was the biggest card
player I ever seen anywhere, we were forever playing
eucha or 500 some where or other, not much money was
ever gambled mostly lottery tickets. When Goulburn
enginemen used to work No1 Southern Auroa and No3
Spirit of Progress we had 19 hours off in barracks at
Albury. Twice we played cards from the moment we got
there to the time we left. The first time Jack Bales and
Pat O’Keefe were sitting at the kitchen table, billy
boiled, cards laid out for 500. The next time Bob and I
done the same to them.We used to get to Albury at about
5am and go back to work at 11pm, no sleep no meals,
just cards, good times, lots of sleep on the way home.”
By all accounts there was no shortage of characters
around the place. Frank Graham recalls a driver they all
referred to as the ‘Mudgee Savage’ due to both his
appearance and his manner. “The funny thing with this
one is that he insisted that a guard who used to come
over from Dubbo had hypnotised him, and every time the
guard would come into the barracks, the ‘Savage’ would
be spooked and leave. He reckoned he could hypnotise
people, we never knew whether he could or not, but it
was funny.” 22
*On Wooden Rails
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
The guys in Newcastle recall one driver who would
come to work on dog watch with his mattress tied on his
back – ready for sleep. Then there was ‘the goat in the
coat’ – didn’t think before opened his mouth. ‘There was
one time working out of Port Kembla – there was metal
sticking up that took up a chunk off the cow catcher – he
took oxy gear and cut it off (the cow catcher)’.
It would also seem that you could get a special train to
the local dance. Fred Grady tells the story: -“ In the
early 50’s when very few people had cars, it was
common practice when there was a bush dance out of
town that 2 enginemen would go to loco and prepare
and “ borrow” a steam engine, go to the shunting yard
“borrow” a brake van and take it to the station load up
all the nourishments and every one and sundry would go
to the dance out of town. After the dance was over they
would just return engine and van and no one knew any
better. But this weekend the dance was at Bellata some
30 miles south of Moree, all went well until the trip
home as apparently some one forgot to “take” water
before going to the dance and they ran out on the way
home. They just left the whole show in the middle of the
Gurley – Moree section. On the Monday morning the
North West mail, No7 come upon this abandon train and
all hell broke loose. The outcome was that the driver was
demoted to labourer and the fireman demoted to cleaner
for 12 months. When I commenced some years later the
driver was still a labourer and retired in that grade
when they closed Moree years later, the fireman was a
driver by then and also left when the depot was closed.
From what I have learnt it was common practice in
many a country depot, a long way from bosses and
sneaky beaks. One has to remember the closest boss to
Moree was in Newcastle.” 23
122
Mark Sheargold
23 Fred Grady, op.cit.
24 Interview with Bob Plain, October 2002
Love of the Loco
Most train drivers speak of their relationship with the
locomotives with an affection which is both unnerving
and endearing. So much of the driver’s life was spent
with the loco, the long hours, irregular shifts, the
disruptions to social and family life, that the maintaining
and running the locomotive was seen almost as ‘social’.
This relationship is also expressed by many drivers who
claim to have enjoyed the job and the work, and felt a
strong loyalty and pride, not to the employer, but to the
job.
Fred Grady says ‘I don’t consider I ever had a
“highlight” of my career but had a good life and time.
Most seem to hold this reflected view of not particularly
good days – but looking back a lot of it was good times
– didn’t think so then’. As with so many other drivers,
Frank Graham has fond memories of many of his
colleagues and the locos that he worked. “The 36 class
were my favourites, they were nice to drive, it rode well
and was especially good on the mountain climbs.”
What is also common amongst many of the old drivers
is that they shared a single childhood focus of wanting
to be on the footplate. Wanted to be train drivers. They
had watched trains as young children, would seek them
out and knew that’s what they wanted to do. By the time
many of them had reached 15 or 16 years of age they
pursued their dream, which often took a dozen or more
years from when they started as juniors – cleaners, shop
boys and call boys, moving through the ranks of acting
firemen, firemen, trainee enginemen to engineman
5th class. Upon retirement, usually with more than 40
years on the job, many would pursue their interest and
passion through local historical groups, rail museums or
model railways.
Former AFULE official and RTBU Locomotive
Division Secretary, Bob Plain describes how he used to
go and watch the trains as a young man, and just always
had a love for the ‘locomotives’. “I was always
fascinated by trains. On Friday nights as a child I would
go to Hornsby looking at trains. I always had an interest
in model trains and train photos.” 24
Not all share the romantic memories of their time on the
loco. Many of these accounts understate the pressures,
emotional and physical. The stresses of long hours,
accidents and fatalities, ever on the look out for danger.
The lifestyle of long hours in the cab, nights spent at
barracks, and working under often extreme conditions of
*On Wooden Rails
heat and cold. There was also the continuous stress of
mainatining your job, both in terms of availability and
from the threat of regular testing. Many drivers end up
retiring from the job ‘medically unfit’. For long-term
drivers that is the only career they have, and the
uniqueness of the job and work meant that unless they
could find work with another rail operator, that was the
end of the line.
Similarly, the love of the engine is not universal. Most
drivers had their favourites, and some saw the
introduction of new engines as adding to their problems.
Correspondence from past drivers shed some reality on
some of the conditions. A favourite source of criticism
was the sixty class Beyer Garrett engines, which
operated from the 1950s to the 1970s in NSW. One letter
to the newspapers claimed that ‘ the Garratt engines
were the worst engines ever on NSW tracks despite what
steam train lovers say. On a hot day they could generate
125 degrees in the cabin and drivers collapsed.’ 25 Jim
Edwards, a former driver from Hornsby, had this to say
about the toll on drivers:
“On paper, they showed enormous tonnage returns, but
did not show (except through the Welfare and
Rehabilitation Sections) their tolls on the human
element forced to man them. These dangerous engines
were ‘widow makers’, caused human suffering and took
their shares of coronaries among the senior staff…..In
the mile-long Woy Woy tunnel on a boiling summer’s
day, you could get readings of 130 degrees [in the cabin]
…. We retired men, all regret (with arthritis and
bronchitis) ever having been loco men.” 26
25 Sun Newspaper (Sydney) 9 March 1973
26 Ibid, 13 March 1973
27 Bruce Heinzel, op.cit
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
It seems that the culture is slowly changing, and
according to many drivers, not for the better. They refer
to a ‘strong loyalty to the job – not the boss – but pride
in the job. Protecting yourself and your mate. We came
on the tail end of the good stuff where blokes really took
pride in the job’.
Bruce Heinzel believes it is actually more rigid now in
many ways– “instructions by supervisor – then they
probably read you the rules then and sent you on your
way , could get away with more as long as you got your
job done. Used to put the ‘bung’ in your ‘bung hole’ or
pigeon hole. They weren’t really taken seriously.
Mostly looked after you then – managers – now they
wouldn’t. They were a bit like the old coppers. Now it is
more regimented. If you did something wrong – your
manager would try to get you out of trouble. Now you
have to respond as to ‘why you should still be employed
by the company’.” 27
Many current drivers have lived and worked through
some of the most dramatic changes in working and
technology to take place in the industry – from the steam
locomotives to diesel to electrification. From the old
‘red rattlers’ to the millennium train, and from freight
trains consisting of several carriages or wagons hauling
hundreds of tons, to the snaking 2 kilometres of freight
trains now operating with loads of tens of thousands of
tons.
*On Wooden Rails
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
124
First train 1855
View from the XPT Cab
Crew of the XPT
Watching the track
Container terminal
*On Wooden Rails
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
Nine Bay Eveleigh Loco, Xmas 1950
*On Wooden Rails
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
The
The rail workshops once occupied a proud place at the
centre of the railway universe. In so many ways, they
were the pulse of the industry, politically, socially and
industrially. From the early contracts to build local
engines and rolling stock at Mort’s Dock in Balmain,
where the first locomotives had to be floated by barge,
to the Clyde
Lawson painted carriages. The large workshops of the
regional centres of Bathurst, Junee, Goulburn, through
to Chullora, the Randwick tram workshops, the
Honeysuckle Point, Cardiff workshops and Goninan’s in
Newcastle and the jewel in the crown, the Eveleigh
Railway
thousands of rail workers.
The early railway maintenance workshops were
established close to the Redfern central terminal, but the
original 27 acre site soon proved inadequate. In 1879 the
government purchased a larger, 62 acre site four
kilometres south of Sydney’s Central Business District,
known as Eveleigh. Most of this section looks at the
conditions and events at Eveleigh Railway
as an example of the vital role played by the railway
workshops in the industrial, community and political life
of the industry and State.
The Eveleigh railway workshops were built between
1880 and 1886 and they continued to operate until 1989,
an unusually long period of continued use for the same
industrial purpose, by Australian standards. At their
peak they employed between five and seven thousand
workers, and performed a wide range of functions. They
were centrally located and at the centre of the local
railway communities that worked there. The workshops
were were a political cauldron and were responsible for
supplying the new state parliament with a constant flow
of labor parliamentarians, many rising to prominence.
Much of the land occupied by the workshops was
previously a dairy farm known as Slade’s Paddock. The
land fell away into swampy ground occupied by a large
frog population. From its early days this land was known
as Frog Hollow and was used throughout the life of the
works in unofficial and official correspondence. Preston
describes, the workshops site as consisting of the high
domed brick buildings comprising 15 bays, the twin
parallel buildings of the workshops, the Manager’s
126
Carriage works, Eveleigh
residence, the foundry, the Erecting Shop, Running Shed
and Marshalling yard.
“The administration of the works was controlled from a
fine two-story brick building which was built in the
north-east corner of the grounds near the present
Redfern Station. A bell tower graced the corner nearest
the works and was complete with a large brass bell. This
carillon had a very practical purpose as the ringing of
its chime was the signal to staff to commence or cease
work at the start or finish of each shift. Such was the
punctuality and strength of its ringing, that local
residents used it to set their clocks in the days before
radio time signals.” 1
After serving the community for some 100 years, most
of the former bustling, vibrant workshops that survived
have been relegated to heritage listings, housing
museums, stores and cafes. Those areas of Eveleigh
preserved for heritage purposes now house the
Australian Technology Park, with the restored office
building being used by the Australian Graduate School
of Engineering Innovation. They are there as a reminder
of how things were not so long ago.
To use Lucy Taksa’s language, “In a somewhat perverse
way Eveleigh can be likened to a bed of roses, for out of
the humus there emerged a strong, yet thorny, tradition
of activism that provided an important foundation for
the State's labour history. What was work like there?
Most people recall the noise, the dirt, the poor amenities
and serious accidents”. 2
1 R.G Preston, The Eveleigh Locomotive
2 Lucy Taksa, Remembering The Eveleigh Railway
*On Wooden Rails
But perhaps the best picture is drawn by Stan Jones, the
Secretary of the Eveleigh Sub-Branch of the Australian
Railways Union, who had followed his grandfather,
father, uncles and cousins into Eveleigh during the
1920s and who described this workplace in the
following poignant terms in 1939:
“Row upon row of drab smoke-grimed buildings,
housing a throbbing energy which pulses forth to the
accompaniment of the thump, thump, thump of giant
presses torturing white-hot steel into servitude. That is
Eveleigh workshops, the heart of the State's transport
system. There is a steady drone of high-powered
machinery, drilling, boring and turning in every possible
fashion; the clatter of overhead cranes, hurrying and
scurrying, fetching and carrying, and the staccato noise
of the boilermakers' rattler. All is somehow resolved into
a unity of sound, disturbed only by an occasional burst
of excessive violence from any one part.
Seemingly submerged in this medley is the human
element - 2,600 individuals, the strongest of them but
puny weaklings besides the machines they control. Yet
they make it all possible. Without them the roaring giant
would be but a whispering ghost.” 3
Eric Adam, who later became a senior engineer in the
rail industry in Australia, recounts his years as an
apprentice Fitter and Turner (from 1929) at Eveleigh:
“The conditions in the Eveleigh
crude, requiring in those days attendance for 48 hours a
week, 7.30 am to 5 pm and, on Saturday mornings 7.30
to noon, as well. I used to be called for early breakfast
by half past five, catch a train about 6 o’clock from
Hornsby to Redfern. There would be no crib break until
12 o’clock……. At the end of the day, at 5 o’clock, we
would have to wash in a bucket or under a tap, take off
our bib and brace overalls and either go home or, two
nights a week, go to Tech in a black shirt and the
trousers from under the overalls still dirty……
At the Eveleigh
with clothes lockers to enable us to change into clean
clothes, so we had to shower at home before turning
in…..While I was serving the apprenticeship, the 48
hour week was reduced to 44 hours per week. ……
When the staff went into the
they had to pick up a token with their number on from a
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
board, to indicate that they were at work and put it back
on the hook on the board when they went out again.
During the day, if they needed to use the toilet, there was
a man sitting at the toilet door and they had to hand him
the token, and he would write the time. They had a
limited time in the toilet and he would book them if they
overstayed.” 4
The workshops were run by the clock, as Preston states
in his booklet on Eveleigh, “the bell above the office
was used to start and finish each work period. At 7.25
am the bell would sound to allow each employee to file
past a timekeeper located in No 8 Bay. This officer
handed each man a numbered ‘token’ to record his
attendance. …..At 7.30, the bell rang again and woe
betide any who were not at their work position ready
with tools in hand.” 5
It is little wonder then that when the workshops finally
introduced the Taylorist ‘Card System’ that the workers
at Eveleigh responded angrily, precipitating the general
strike of 1917. Since the workshops were built, the
accounts of management and supervision are of strict
hierarchy and often petty accountability of all
movements and time. This continued well beyond the
1917 strike, and remained a feature of daily life well in
to the 1950s and 1960s.
Richard Butcher who has recently published his
reminiscences of Eveleigh, worked as a Blacksmith,
Welder and Assistant welding engineer, fondly recalls
both the austere conditions and some of the lighter
aspects of life and work in the workshops.
Iron
3Eveleigh - The Heart Of The Transport System', Daily News: Feature for Transport
Remembering the Eveleigh Railway
4Eric Adam – No Fear of Change, or Learning to Live with Change, Iron Horse Press, Sydney 2001, p 7
5R.G.Preston, The Eveleigh Locomotive
*On Wooden Rails
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
“Locomotives and carriages get pretty dirty whilst in
service, therefore head protection of some kind was
often worn. Berets, whether home made or ex-army,
were worn by some; others sported old felt hats; and
many regularly made paper hats out of folded up
newspapers…… when the oxygen stream cutting button
was pressed to oxidise a horn stay or brake rigging nut
or bolt, a shower of sparks and white hot metal spewed
all around, so head protection and a good pair of long
armed chrome leather gloves were desirable.” 6
Henry Lawson (poet and author) worked as a carriage
painter at Hudson Brothers workshops at Clyde and his
story, titled ‘Two Boys at Grinder Brothers’ provides a
glimpse into the harsh working conditions and abuse of
child labour during his time at Clyde.
“Five or six half-grown larrikins sat on the cemented sill
of the big window of Grinder Bros. Railway Coach
factory waiting for the work bell, and one of the number
was Bill Anderson – known as ‘Castor Hoil’ – a young
terror of fourteen or fifteen.
His boss was a sub-contractor for the coach-painting
and always tried to find twenty minutes’ work for his
boys just about five or ten minutes before the bell rang.
He employed boys because they were cheap and he had
a lot of rough work, and they could get under floors and
‘bogies’ with their pots and brushes, and do all the
‘priming’ and paint the trucks. His name was Collins,
and the boys were called ‘Collins’ Babies’. It was a joke
in the shop that he had a ‘weaning’ contract. The boys
were all “over fourteen”, of course, because of the
128
Group of
Education Act. Some were nine or
ten – wages from five shillings to
ten shillings. It didn’t matter to
Grinder Brothers so long as the
contracts were completed and the
dividends paid.” 7
In another story featuring one of
the main characters from Two Boys
at Grinder Brothers, another grim
image is drawn:
“In one of these years a paragraph
appeared in a daily paper to the
effect that a constable had
discovered a little boy asleep on the
steps of Grinder Bros factory at
four o’clock one rainy morning. He
awakened him and demanded an explanation.
The little fellow explained that he worked there and he
was frightened of being late; he started work at six, and
was apparently greatly astonished to hear that it was
only four. The constable examined a small parcel which
the frightened child had in his hand. It contained a clean
apron and three slices of bread and treacle. The child
further explained that he woke up and thought it was
late, and didn’t like to wake mother and ask her the time
‘because she’d been washin’. He didn’t look at the clock
because they ‘didn’t have one.’” The character of the
fourteen year old Arvie Aspinall dies in both stories
from exposure to the wet and cold, coming and going to
‘Grinder’s’, and Collins [the contractor], as Lawson put
it, ‘was one ‘baby’ short the next day.” 8
“In the Smiths Shops winter was pretty pleasant because
the forge fires gave good relief from the cold. The large
round holes in the top of the buildings would filter in a
shaft of light, the appearance of a floodlight and as the
sun rose higher, the beam moved across the floor. I
remember it was like a floodlight on the old dirt floors
and in the air, millions of sparkling fine particles of coal
dust and smoke haze shimmered like the colours of the
rainbow !”
“In summer, however, the shops would be almost
unbearably hot. Many of the jobs throughout the
workshops involved working in front of a hot furnace,
over a roaring forge fire, or in the superheated confines
of a locomotive’s fire box. These could be unpleasant
conditions….” 9
6 Richard Butcher, The Great Eveleigh Railway
7 Henry Lawson, Two Boys at Grinder Bros, from A Campfire Yarn: Complete
8 Henry Lawson, Arvie Aspinall’s Alarm Clock, from A Campfire Yarn: Complete
9 Butcher, op.cit., p 206
*On Wooden Rails
At the Centre of Community Life
Eveleigh workshops also provide a clear illustration of
the distinctive role of the railways in their communities
and the links between work, communities, industrial and
political activity. Their position as a major employer
contributed to the growth of the working class suburbs
around them, and the life within those communities.
It has been noted earlier in this book that the relationship
between the workshops and the political life of the state
was particularly strong. With more than 25
parliamentarians coming out of the workshops, among
them Premiers McGowan, McKell and Cahill. This
relationship cannot be separated from the close
community ties, the religious and social networks and
kinship that existed in these neighbourhoods. The
railway communities around the workshops not only
supplied the parliaments with significant numbers of
members, they directly shaped and influenced their
political views and were electorally well placed to hold
them accountable at the ballot box.
The networks that made up the ‘railway family’ in these
communities, were not only political in nature. The
neighbourhood, sporting, and religious engagements all
went to the shaping of the identities of the
neighbourhoods, the people who lived in them and in
turn, the values and practices that went with them into
the workplace. In situations where generations of
workers are employed in the same location (fathers,
grandfathers, sons, brothers, cousins, often all working
in the workshops), there is a particularly strong bond
between the issues of the workplace and those of the
community around it.
Stan Jones is a typical example of the closeness and
overlap of these networks. He went to work in Eveleigh
in the mid-1920s, where he “joined his father who was
a boilermaker, and his uncle and cousins who were
moulders and machinists. ……. Neighbourhood
networks were fundamentally affected by such
overlapping bonds of family, class and workplace.
…Like his father, Jones was born in Redfern where he
lived with his family in Wells Street. His aunt lived next
door, while his grandfather and other members of his
extended family lived in Eveleigh Street, almost
immediately behind.” 10
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
These networks also extended to a range of social
activities, including parties, dances, church meetings
and sporting events. The identity of the workshop
workers seems to be as much defined by their
experiences in the workshops, as in their local
communities and neighbourhood. They proudly
celebrated their common work, their sporting heroes and
their civic and political leaders.
Red Square and
The uses of space for industrial meetings at the
workshops were a powerful means for the workers, their
unions and political leaders, to not only cultivate a sense
of cross-sectional class identity and solidarity, but also
as an act of defiance and claim of territory and terrain.
Particularly after the events during the 1917 general
strike, in which Eveleigh and the Randwick Tram
workshops played a central organising role and the
subsequent formation of rank and file shop committees,
workplace meetings staked a claim on the industrial
space. During the 1920s, the Australian Railways Union
was holding regular gate meetings, then lunch-hour
meetings within the workshops. These general meetings
of the shop committees were not limited to sectional or
work area specific issues, making them dangerous from
the perspective of the Railway Commissioners. 11
Many of the meetings were deemed ‘political’ by the
Railway Commissioners and prohibited union officials
from addressing such meetings on railway premises in
1930. As Taksa describes, this gave rise to a very
interesting and bold use of public space immediately
outside or at the entrances to the railway premises, as the
sites for protest and industrial action. Politicians such as
Scullin and Jack Lang chose the Eveleigh gates to
deliver their policy and election speeches in the 1920s
and 1930s.
10Lucy Taksa, Labour Politics at the Eveleigh Railway
University of Wollongong Press, 2001, p62
11Lucy Taksa, ‘Pumping the Life-Bl;ood into Politics and Place’: Labour Culture and the Eveleigh Railway
History, No 79, November 2000, Pp 11 – 34
*On Wooden Rails
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
Taksa argues that the mass meetings enabled Eveleigh’s
employees to revamp the terrain on which they engaged
in struggle over their rights, because they fostered
industrial links across occupations and spatial
connections between different parts of the workshops. 12
The refusal to allow such meetings became a source of
conflict and contest of its own. The more workers were
denied access to each other, the labour movement and
their political affiliates, the more they sought it as a
means of asserting their own cultural and political
identities.
“Annual leave was one week each year, and there was
no long service leave! Small wonder that there was
confrontations between the workers and the
management. ……..There was havoc at times, as many
workers, ultra strong in their beliefs, proved to be fine
speakers at the union meetings held in what became
labeled ‘Red Square’ the area in front of the First Aid
Centre and near the foundry and first aid room.“ 13 The
company and official name for it was Ambulance
Square.
Red Square became a crucial space of defiance and
resistance, it became the workers ‘borderlands’ that they
could occupy and defend and attack the employer’s
discourse.
“There were a number of interest groups that had a level
of ‘unofficial power’ within the workshops. In some
workshops the Masonic Lodge ruled with a closed fist;
whilst in others, like the Large Erecting Shop for
example, the Catholics held sway. On top of this there
was the right wing Australian Labor Party and groups of
Communists as well.” 14
130
Outside Eveleigh
By the 1950s the success of the protest space mapped
out by the workers was officially acknowledged by the
approval of permanent facilities at the back of Red
Square for use as a meeting room by shop committees
and union officials.
Manufacturing Trains, Aircraft , Tanks
and Face Masks
The workshops were initially involved in repairing and
maintenance of locomotives and rolling stock imported
from overseas. From 1905 Eveleigh was involved in the
construction and manufacture of railway stock. The
opening of the new Chullora workshops, in the 1920s,
saw most of these activities transferred, with Eveleigh
focusing on repair and maintenance and the manufacture
of tools. However, Eveleigh was later to resume some
locomotive building activities such as the construction
of the famous 38 class engines (numbered from 3806 to
3830), between 1945 and 1949 and the 58 class freight
engines between 1950 and 1952. 15 The workshops
would also be called on during the wars for munitions
and manufacture of aircraft and tanks, as well as
providing face masks during the influenza epidemic in
1919.
Building Locomotivess
For the first half century of the New South Wales
Railways, locomotives and most rolling stock was
imported from overseas (predominantly Britain and the
Unites States). Some early contracts were given to
Mort’s Dock and others to manufacture rolling stock
locally, but mostly it was considered too costly and
uncompetitive to engage in local manufacture.
Some of these early attempts, for example, the contracts
awarded to Thomas Wearne in 1893 to build engines, of
which only four part completed engines were finished,
were taken to Eveleigh and completed.
The workshops industrial and political activism,
particularly through their unions and the Labor Council,
was critical in influencing the NSW government's
decision to manufacture locomotives at Eveleigh
between 1906 and the mid-1920s.
An important figure in this outcome was J.S.T.
McGowan, a devoted trade unionist whilst employed as
a boilermaker at the railway workshops later member for
12Lucy Taksa – Spatial Practices and the struggle over ground at the Eveleigh Railway
History Conference, ANU Canberra, 2001, p234
13Richard Butcher, op.cit., p210
14Butcher, op.cit., p 210
15See Preston, op.cit., p 13
*On Wooden Rails
Redfern and first Labor Premier of NSW. Throughout
1905, the issue of local production was intensely
debated in the parliament, the press and between
Premier Carruthers and his Railway Commissioners.
McGowan actively opposed the introduction of
piecework, bonus systems and spoke on behalf of public
sector engineering workers, before a Royal Commission
which inquired into the possibility of public sector
manufacturing in 1904. A compelling part of the
argument put forward for local production, was the
relationship and networks between the workshops, the
broader communities and labour movement. The
majority report of the Royal commission concluded that
‘the machinery and plant at Eveleigh workshops is
eminently suitable for economically manufacturing
locomotives with the addition of some machinery and
accommodation.’ 16
The Royal Commission recommended that the
manufacture of locomotives and rolling stock should be
undertaken locally and the workshops commenced this
undertaking the following year. The first contract was
awarded to the Clyde Engineering Company, but these
were soon extended to Eveleigh and some of the other
main workshops. During this time, Eveleigh and other
workshops manufactured a range of engines and rolling
stock, with approximately 150 locomotives being
produced at Eveleigh between 1906 to the early 1920s.
Wartime Production
In World War 1, the railways workshops performed a
range of munitions works, producing heavy artillery
shells and guns. By the time of the Second World War
they were called on for a larger manufacturing effort.
At this time, the workshops undertook a range of
munitions work as well as the construction and
manufacture of aircraft, tanks and components and
parts, as well as equipment like radar. During the 1940s,
2000 men and women were employed on aircraft
production at Chullora alone. 17
Assembly of tanks began in 1941 at Chullora. During
this time Eveleigh built three experimental tanks and
three production tanks. The workshops completed the
manufacture of some 54 tanks and work on
modifications and components for other tanks had been
carried out. The workshops were also heavily involved
in production of guns and ammunition. 18
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
Natural Disasters
16Gunn, op. cit., p 250
17Gunn, op.cit., Pp 377-378
18Ibid. 19NSW Railway & Tramway Magazine, March 1919, cited in Gunn pp 289-290
Carriage Building
During 1919, NSW was swept by a severe influenza
epidemic and drought. On the one hand, these
significantly affected the traffic and revenue of the
railways, with starving stock dying on the farm, and
massively reduced passenger movements in the
metropolitan areas, due to widespread illness and fear of
infection. On the other hand, the railways played a
crucial role in meeting demands for medical equipment
and facilities.
The Randwick and Eveleigh workshops carried out a
program by the Department to manufacture face masks
for the health authorities and railway workers. “In one
weekend almost 64,000 masks were made to equip
railway and tramway staff throughout the state. ….
Experimental railway cars were equipped with
‘inhalation chambers’ using an atomizer, a glass jar
filled with disinfectant and a supply of compressed air in
the fight against the influenza threat.” 19
Machine Shop
*On Wooden Rails
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
Enterprising Characters
There is an almost endless list of tales, tall
and true and characters larger than life, that
flow from the workshops. Richard Butcher
provides some examples from his time at
Eveleigh.
“There were always a number of
‘characters’ at Eveleigh; men who were, at
times more enetertaining than the old Tivoli.
There were strange nicknames given to such
men: silly, laughable and often selfexplanatory
names like Knuckle Head, Hairy
Harry, Moose Head, Weary Willy, Dopey,
Bill the Dill, Baldy, Greasy Joe and
Scatterbrain. Other nicknames were more
esoteric: Tic-Toc, who liked clocks and repaired them;
Plonky, who liked to drink too much; Hungry Norman,
who wanted all the overtime he could get; Magic Eye,
who was cross-eyed; Paddles, who walked with his feet
spread outwards; Slappy Jack, a rough machinist of the
‘she’ll be right mate’ variety; Red Dean, a red hot
communist; and Tapper, who was a young chap who
constantly seemed to be tapping everything with a
hammer. Each workshop had its ‘actors’, odd people
and, of course, its storytellers: some had travelled the
world; others just talked as if they had.” 20
“Other men ran small businesses: the hair cutters or
hairdressers were outside Blacksmiths No 1 shop,
hidden behind a tarpaulin and three furnaces with a
curtain draped to hide the activity. Here they charged 2
shillings and 6 pence for a haircut with some powder on
the neck thrown in. There was a bit of competition so at
other workshop locations a hair cut could be obtained
for considerably less if a person was prepared to
‘travel’“. 21
While many of those who spent their working lives in
the workshops have fond memories of the lighter and
more enjoyable moments, these recollections are
constantly overshadowed by the dirt, the dust, the heat
and dangers awaiting every activity.
“The analysts from the Wilson Street laboratories
discovered, years later, that the area was laced with
cyanide, with micro particles layers on all the overhead
beams and structures. We smiths were tough men but we
certainly didn’t know any better, either’ 22
20 Butcher, op.cit., Pp 206-207
21 Butcher, op.cit., p 206
22 Ibid., p 207
23 Ibid., p 210
132
Art Show, Eveleigh
Social Activities
Red Square was the gathering place for social and
political activity, and the site of many a heated union
meeting. It was also the stage and ampitheatre for many
performances and social activities.
“One Eveleigh union man I vividly remember, Jeff
Aldridge, told me about the Eveleigh Brass Band. Jeff
said they played at times in Red Square and he said the
band was an important link between the worker and
society. ……Each week a band recital took place in Red
Square.” 23
Butcher recalls also that once a month workers gained
an additional extended lunch period (of about 20
minutes) to be entertained by performing artsists,
organised by the Shop Committee – artists as diverse as
Yehudi Menuhin and Rolf Harris, Johny O’Keefe, Roger
Woodward and possibly even Dame Joan Sutherland,
performed at Eveleigh.
Other entertainment included, at least from the 1930s to
the 1950s, regular boxing tournaments and at other
times a movie was screened . The workshops and their
social activities spilled over into their community
activities through cricket and football teams, local
competitions between different workshops. To close on
Lucy Taksa’s metaphor of a ‘bed of roses’, the working
conditions and politics of the workshops were mostly
thorny, where the social pursuits, including hotly
contested flower shows, expose the soft underside of the
workshops culture.
*On Wooden Rails
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*On Wooden Rails
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134
A Day in the Life
-Eveleigh Amenities
Extracts from The Eveleigh Locomotive
The first staff worked a 48 hour week and this was spread over six days. In time this reduced to 44 hours, in
1982 – 38 hour week.
Amenities were a constant source of negotiation. The original toilets were wooden seats separated by timber
partitions. Under each block was a sloping trough through which water flowed. At the start of each shift, a
designated employee turned the tap to start the clearing flow. Some of the toilets were set in a block on an
elevated mezzanine floor. One of the pranks of the time was for the apprentices to wait until the stalls were full
of the more senior tradesmen. A lad would take a ball of paper, light it and drop it into the running water then
run from the scene. Yells and roars rent the air as the water carried the ball of flame under each of the seats.
One manager became concerned that staff were taking too long to complete their daily constitutional. An
elderly employee, noted for his honesty, was positioned at the entrance to the toilet area and, as each employee
went in, his name, token number and the time were entered in a book. Upon his reappearance, the time was
again noted and woe betide anyone who stayed beyond three minutes! Similarly, only one visit per day was
permitted and any staff requiring a second call had to bring a note from his sub-foreman explaining the
circumstances. (p 18)
Morning tea and lunch time involved another strange ritual. On starting work, each man who wanted tea placed
his billy on a ladder like rack near the sign on point. A few minutes before the meal break, two Shop Boys
would fill large watering cans with hot water and fill each billy on the rack. ……. Morning tea was announced
by a bell at 9 am and ended by another at 9.10. A period of two minutes was allowed before lunch to wash
hands before the meal could commence at 12 noon. A warning bell rang at 12.28 and all had to be at work for
the 12.30 bell. (p20)
In the early period, trade and labouring staff wore trousers and shirts. Most wore waistcoats and nearly
everyone sported a hat. Many had a tie carefully tucked behind the waistcoat to avoid becoming tangled in
machinery. Senior trades often wore a bowler hat. These were essential attire for supervising staff who also
wore coats. The Manager and Senior Staff wore suits and hats……….For the fitters working in the greasy
conditions under locomotives, a paper hat became the norm. Folded from the previous day’s newspaper, they
could be thrown away when grime and perspiration finalised their usefulness. (pp 20-21)
*On Wooden Rails
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
Inside Enfield Signal Box
*On Wooden Rails
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
In the Signal Box
“Since the first train ran in New South
Wales in 1855 some form of signalling
had always been used to control
movements and ensure safeworking.
Initially, semaphore signals were
positioned at stations. Wooden arms fixed
to the top of a long pole were worked
from levers at the base……Gradually,
more sophisticated forms of signalling
were introduced as new lines were added
to the system and marshalling yards
expanded. Signal boxes equipped with
batteries of tall levers became a familiar
aspect of rail operations. These levers
controlled the points on the track,
directing the movement of trains into the required line.”
1
Signal lamps were kerosene-filled and required a
properly trimmed wick to burn for 7 days continuously
and to exhibit the correct light to the signal arm glasses.
These were awkward in windy conditions, especially
when you had to replace signal lamps attached to high
signal posts. The signal poles were often over 40 feet
high.
A 1939 article in the ARU journal RailRoad described
the requirements, status and work of the signalman.
“From the day he steps into the signal box until he
retires, he is subject to periodical examinations in
safeworking, eyesight, hearing and medical. So stringent
are some of these examinations that any signalman not
found in perfect health is immediately removed from the
signal box and reduced to the grade of porter.
Bells and telephones are ringing, answering them and at
the same time attending to the big cumbersome looking
lever machines or even the more complicated power
machines. And I am not surprised to see signalmen
walking out of the signal box tired and weary after eight
hours of duty – frequently taking their lunch home with
them just as they brought it.” 2
A pamphlet produced by the newly formed Signalmen’s
Progress Committee of the ARU, details some of the
136
employment conditions prevailing during the 1930s.
Firstly, no person could be appointed to a Signalmen’s
grade until they were 21 years of age.
“To become a signalman in this period, men had to be
fully qualified in all systems of safeworking in operation,
irrespective of whether they were to obtain a job that did
not require such qualifications. Junior Porters were
required to study in their own time, or attend classes at
Railway Institutes, and were required to be fully
qualified in safeworking or other railway subjects such
as Coaching and Goods Accounts, before attaining 21
years of age. Should they fail to do so, or show no
inclination or attempt to qualify, they were dismissed –
sacked – at 21 years, or alternatively employed in the
Carriage Cleaning Sheds.” 3
The classification of signalmen and signal boxes was
based on a ‘marks’ or points system adopted from
England. The formula would allocate marks for different
aspects of box working. For example, to manually pull
over and replace lever in normal position (2 marks);
swing vehicular gates over crossings and swing back
across the road (5 marks); at a signal box where
overhead section switch indicators are provided which
necessitates prompt action being taken in the event of
interruption to power (25 marks). The formula would be
used to classify the box and the grade paid for working
the box, which caused a lot of disparity between grades
and concern from workers on the grading system. 4
1 Hearn, op.cit., p132
2 Railroad, 21 February, 1939
3 ARU Pamphlet, cited in Maurie Mulheron, 50 Years of signalling: History of the Signalmen’s Section, ARU NSW, 1936 –1986, p12
4 Mulheron, op.cit.,
Signal Box Wollongong 1902
(Wollongong Library/Illawarra
Historical Society)
*On Wooden Rails
Men On the Wall
“The train-control officer was generally referred to as
the ‘man on the wall’, for in smaller station offices and
signal boxes, that is where the control phone with its
imperious ring was mounted. In Albury, the officer on
duty had two ‘men on the wall’, besides Junee Control
[Juco], to confer with, the Victorian control officer
overseeing the standard gauge board in distant Spencer
Street could also summon us at will from what was
known as Centrol.” 5
At some locations where there were Distant and Home
Signals, there would be indicators in the signal box,
showing the position of the arms on the Distant Signals.
The indicator would contain coloured sections with the
words stop (red), wrong (white) and clear (green) with a
small handle pointing to the position that the signal arm
was indicating. The signal box used various forms of
communications from telegraphy, to morse code, to
internal telephones using different numbers of rings to
relay messages.
In many country locations, the smaller signal boxes
were also worked by assistant station masters or
safeworking station assistants, as part of their normal
duties. Thus, the skill requirements and duties at country
stations pre-dated any modern concepts of multi-skilling
or multi-tasking.
In many crossing loops and single line boxes, ‘married’
quarters were provided, as well as single
accommodation, usually of a poor standard.
Nonetheless, rent was cheap, promotional opportunities
were slow, and signalmen would choose to remain in
these relatively isolated and difficult locations rather
than seek higher grades in larger centres.
Levers in Redhead Signal Box
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
Maintaining the Signals
The Signal Sectionman and assistant were responsible
for ensuring the correct working of the signal equipment
(attending to the signal frames, points, locks and
mechanical signals). The signal electricians would tend
to the electrical workings of the signals (cleaning and
recharging wet batteries and maintaining telegraphy,
telephones and electrical signal equipment) and
depending on the box, many boxes were often
temperamental, and requiring regular repairs and
maintenance. These workers would travel between
signal boxes in their allocated section, often over large
distances, to keep the equipment and boxes in good
working order.
Max Harrison joined the job in 1971 and after working
at Chullora as an electrical fitter apprentice, returned to
Parkes and worked on a perway gang before becoming
a Signal Sectionman’s Assistant. The Sectionman was
Ron Caban, Max had to wait ten years for old Ron to
retire before he was promoted to Signal Sectionman. He
worked in this job until about five years ago, then
managed the team as well as the team at Dubbo.
“Parkes was a railway town, family and friends were on
the railway. My sister worked in the telegraph office at
Parkes, her husband was a guard, my brother was a
fireman on steam, my grandfather an examiner, my son
is a train driver, it gets into your blood. When I was five
or six year old ,I’d go and watch them from the overhead
bridge, put the penny on the track and watch the trains
flatten ‘em, the driver would oblige with a blast on the
whistle.” 6
Max and Ron were responsible for repairing and
maintenance, maintaining the kerosene lamps, work on
mechanical points and mechanical signals and repairs
after derails. They maintained signal boxes across the
area from Manildra through to Kyakatoo,
Cookamidgera, Parkes, Condobolin, Forbes , Bogan
Gate, Peak Hill, Naramine, as well sidings and crossing
loops . They were all manned 24 / 7 in those days.
“We’d go out with the two of us on a motortrike, camp a
couple of nights a week , take the bedroll and billy, then
trike out from camp on a two man trike. Had a
systematic maintenance – do the rounds regularly. Later
we had a car. It was a two man team – we used the press
button code rings, the phone on the wall, even tap into
lines along the track. Reacted to wherever there was a
failure”.
5 Lloyd Holmes, Tales of the Rails, Australian Railway History, Vol. 56, No. 807, January 2005, p7
6 Interview with Max Harrison, June 2005
*On Wooden Rails
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
“ A signaller in an isolated box would love to see you
coming….it was pretty lonely in some of those places,
they’d only see drivers for a few minutes as they passed
through, so it was a social call as well for these blokes
when we’d stop in and say g’day. The signallers were
good blokes, all different,. Characters – every one of
them in their own right , the art of conversation hadn’t
been lost there – they looked forward to sharing the
day’s experiences and a yarn.” 7
“Ron and I got on well, we’d look after each other.
Living and camping with your mate – it was close - its
like a marriage, it isn’t going to last if you didn’t accept
and tolerate each other. I lost a master key once – pretty
important – I wasn’t qualified to have it – we were
camped at Tottenham had a fire going so I said to Ron –
‘you stay here, and I’ll go and do the maintenance in the
yard’, left the key and it disappeared – the Sectionman,
was disciplined – suspended without pay – I footed half
the bill / half my wages while he was suspended”.
Technology has changed a fair bit in signalling – closure
and rationalisation of signal boxes, largely replaced now
by remote controlling – in the area that Ron and Max
worked, all train movements are now facilitated from
Orange – with the use of satellite phones, mobiles, and
four wheel drive vehicles.
Later developments saw consoles with electronic
working, toggles and push button replacing many of the
old levers. Some signal boxes became modern
complexes with new equipment, while others operated
on a combination of toggle switches, automatic
indicators and manually operated levers. Modern signal
boxes, or Centralised Traffic Control, are now
computerised, replacing multiple, manually operated
signal boxes and many of the signalmen that worked
them. Through all of the technological changes and
moves from manual to more automated and
computerised working, the skill required to ensure
safeworking has changed, but has certainly not
diminished.
Frank Cox was a signalman in Bathurst, joining the
railway before WWII and retiring in 1983, who claimed
that while there had been locomotive changes from
steam to diesel-electric, resulting in faster running, a lot
of the equipment around the station hadn’t changed
much at all.
7 Ibid
8 Interview with Frank Cox, in Hearn, op.cit., 135
9 Ken Ames, op. Cit., describing Katoomba Signal Box, 1951, p 11
10 Maurie Mulheron interview in Hearn, op.cit., p133
138
Train Control Sydney
“If you visit the signal boxes down here [at Bathurst],
you’ll find that they are still worked manually. They’ve
got the old levers, ……. And if you want to move
something you really have to work on it…………..When
I left down there, they still had the old, ancient telephone
system – wind the handle……they were very backward
with their equipment and changes.” 8
Inside the Box
“The signal frame had 40 levers, which included
signals, points and lock bar levers. The double line
safeworking system in operation was block telegraph
with starting signal control.
The signal box was well equipped with many telephones,
block telegraph instruments, and all the new gear to run
a good 24-hour signal box.” 9
Maurie Mulheron started as a signalman in Lithgow in
1943 “I liked the work, I was my own boss, I liked the
additional responsibility…….You worked your guts out.
Lithgow was a real hub of activities as far as the war was
concerned. There was the small arms factory there, all
the collieries and the coal and the traffic that was
passing through Lithgow had to be seen to be believed.” 10
Maurie was a leading union activist in the ARU. he was
Signal Section Secretary, and at one time Branch Vice
President, and was instrumental in some of the major
campaigns to improve conditions in the signal box.
These included the formation of new grades with the
introduction of the new ‘super boxes’. Another
campaign was around the reduced working week,
refusing to open the Eastern Suburbs line until such time
as Transport Minister Cox agreed to the reduction in
hours.
*On Wooden Rails
The track diagram is a very important part of the Signal
Box equipment, as it indicates to the signalman the exact
location of points, signals and all train movements
within a given area. It shows the Up and Down main
lines, suburban lines and also siding points and where
these converge to and from the main line. The diagram
also displays lock lights.
“Green when free to operate and a white light to indicate
the position of the points, whether normal or reverse. The
position of the signals are repeated by a red light when a
stop and a green light when clear. Thus, the Signalman,
by strictly observing his track diagram he is able to
skilfully operate points and signals and promote
efficiency in the co-ordination of transport. The
Signalman’s technical and exacting duties frequently
demand precision judgements and he is responsible not
only for the safe transit of thousands of human lives, but
also of valuable live stock, goods and perishable trains.” 11
Former Station Master Ken Ames described the pride
and detailed care taken of the signal equipment. “In a
signal box, irrespective of the type of frame, all those
concerned with the working took great pride in keeping
everything as spotless as possible. The brass work would
be highly polished and all the glass windows and fittings
without a speck on them. On mechanical frames that had
the full-size levers controlling the signals, points and
facing point locks, extra care was taken to clean the
handles on the upper part of the levers. This section was
about 10 inches (25cm) long of rounded solid steel with
a steel locking pawl handle at the rear and were
manually operated.
This section would be cleaned back to natural highly
polished steel by the use of a special strip emery paper
supplied by the Railway Stores. A special cloth
approximately 14 x 18 inches (35 x 48cm), also supplied,
would be used by all employees using the levers to
prevent the salt from their hands coming into contact
with the polished steel and causing rust. “ 12
The signal box has always played a significant role in
the prompt and safe movement of trains within the area
of control. Barry Camage worked many country stations
and signal boxes before managing Train Control in
Sydney during the 1980s. He describes some of the
workings of the signal box: “there were the diagrams
that highlight the various positions of signals, then
another that shows clearance points. Another diagram
tells you which signals, points and lock bars that are
numbered on the diagram, tell you what your different
11 Mulheron, op.cit., p8
12 Ames, op.cit., p92
13 Interview with Barry Camage, July 2005
14 Hearn, op.cit., p135
15 ibid., p136
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
signals are, starting or ‘home’ or things like that. At
Tarana – safeworking systems included block telegraph,
on the Tarana to Loxley side – track block automatic,
Tarana Oberon, staff and ticket, different again – had to
know the different systems. It was a 32 lever frame at
Tarana – some of the down signals could be hard – had
a ratchet wheel you had to turn then an indicator behind
the signals to show whether it had been freed.”
Barry claims that the skills and technology of the signal
box and modern control rooms have changed, but
remain just as important in the safeworking of trains.
“One of the differences is that the signalmen in the box
had to inspect the trains as they went past for hot boxes,
or load shifts and the like, now the signaller can’t see
the trains, only see the movements on the diagrams. A lot
of the boxes have been abolished and centralised into
control rooms, and a lot of places don’t have shunting
yards, and the technology is much more advanced
now.” 13
A Woman in the Box
Mark Hearn gives an account of Pat Groves, who spent
about twenty years on the railways as a station assistant,
and in the mid-1970s became the Secretary of the
Station Assistant’s Section which is when she first
decided that she wanted to do the safeworking course to
better understand it and the terminology. From that time
on, she was determined to become a signalman, much to
the consternation and hostility of instructors,
management and some of her co-workers.
“When I first put in my application for the job in the
safeworking school, I was late putting the application in,
but in the meantime, the talk went through from the
department and back to the union and back to the
department. Finally I was brought in for an interview
and was asked among other questions, why didn’t I go
out, if I wanted to promote, why didn’t I go out as a
clerk. I said, ‘Because I don’t want to go out as a clerk,
I want to go out as a signalman’ .“ 14
Her persistence saw her become the first woman
‘signalman’ in the NSW railways.
“When I first went out as a safeworking station assistant
it was a slow job, but it was quite fast enough for me, as
I had never had anything to do with the operating of
signals, I’d never been in a box before …… each box is
a bit faster to the last box and you gradually get used to
the faster working of trains.” 15
Since 1977 Pat continued her career as a ‘signalman’
and remained active in the ARU until her retirement.
*On Wooden Rails
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
Sydenham New Box
footnote
140
Electric staff
Ivanhoe Staff Hut
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On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
Signal Frame, Enfield
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On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
142
Fettlers Camp, Bonning (Bicentennial Copying Project, State Library of NSW)
*On Wooden Rails
Hairy Legs -
The Permanent Way
The perway repaired and maintained the line, a
continual job that was done in gangs of fettlers
(labourers or ‘hairy legs’) supervised by gangers
(foremen), over a given stretch or section of line. To
ensure that traffic could move safely over the section,
the perway gangs would constantly check for flaws,
wear, rotten sleepers, damage, sand on the track or other
obstructions that might endanger traffic.
James Docherty claims that the perway gangs were
permanent employees, not to be confused with ‘navvies’
who laboured under private contract on public works
like dams, bridge and railway construction. As Docherty
argues, “the navvies were men without women, billetted
in primitive all-male camps, frowned on by the wife of
the permanent fettler who lived a settled life in a home
provided by the department. There was no hob-nobbing
between the two groups, the wives of the fettlers saw to
that.” 1
While some of these distinctions may hold true, they are
too simplistic and nostalgic, and seriously discount the
lives and conditions endured by all members of the
perway gangs. The term ‘fettler’ and ‘navvy’ have been
used interchangeably in the industry and descriptions of
the work. Fettlers were not by any means, all married
men, living in permanent and cosy accommodation. All
accounts of work on the perway reflect that life on the
perway more often than not, involved isolation, rough
conditions and lack of amenities, with fettlers (and often
their families) camping by the line in tents or rough
mobile dwellings and shanty camps. While many ‘hairy
legs’ were single men, others shared the nomadic and
rough life with their families, who would live with the
fettler where and when the work took them.
long work, performed under extreme weather and
working conditions. Tales of camps of fettlers in the
‘middle of nowhere’, living in austere and crude
accommodation (more often tents issued by the
Department, or rough camps consisting of lean-tos,
humpy’s and makeshift shelter), in remote areas. The
tents were prone to being blown down in strong winds,
or catching alight from sparks from passing
locomotives, in addition to other conditions that
accompany ‘camping out’.
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
On the Track, Bourke 1921
In reviewing their policies and results at the end of 1894,
the Railway Commissioners said that not only had they
improved the materials being used, but: “We have
supplied every ganger of fettlers with a tricycle to
enable him to move speedily over his section, and also
equipped the gangs over a considerable portion of the
lines with a new description of light hand car, to enable
them to move rapidly with their materials from point to
point” 2
These crude trikes were used to transport men and
materials over sections of the line and themselves
required considerable physical effort. For most of the
last century these were ‘human powered’ hand trikes,
later being replaced with fuelled and motorised vehicles.
Perway Gang, Darnick (Bicentennial Copying Project, State Library of NSW)
1James Docherty, unpublished Masters Thesis, The Rise of Railway Unionism, 1880 – 1905, Australian National university,
1973, p 36
2Annual Report of the Railways Commissioners, cited in Gunn, op.cit., p 228
*On Wooden Rails
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
Mostly the perway gangs were ‘out of sight and out of
mind’. The Railway Commissioners, politicians and
most members of the public, didn’t see them and mostly
couldn’t imagine their life. Strangely enough, accounts
from men who worked the perway not only give a vivid
image of a harsh existence, but also a pride in the gang
and the work. The hardness of the job and the conditions
under which it was performed, are almost worn as a
badge of honour by these men.
Describing some of the changes to the job, brought
about by mechanisation and new working, Jimmy
Burns, who worked the perway around Griffith for 30
years, describes the attachment :
“ I found it very hard – we used to have nineteen mile of
track each to look after. That was a ganger and four
men, to look after a piece of track. Well, that was your
prize possession ….. look out if someone else came
along and took a bit of material off your section or even
rode over it without your permission. It was like you
owned it. And of course today you own nothing on the
railway.” 3
Rex Sorby started as a fettler in an extra-gang in 1956,
at Woolbrook (between Armidale and Tamworth). “You
used to swing a big hammer to knock the sleepers off,
didn’t have a ‘pigs foot’ to pull the dogs – used to jack
the rails up in the air and go along with a twenty eight
pound hammer to knock the sleepers off…….When I first
started we camped in a six-by-eight tent. And they paid
us about five bob a week, I think, camping allowance”. 4
Mark Sheargold was a fettler in Broken Hill in the early
1970s. Things were mechanised by then and he worked
on mechanical TASAR gangs, upgrading sections
between Broken Hill and Parkes, mostly operating ontrack
machinery. His gang worked the 300km section
between Broken Hill and Darnick. He talks of working
in the desert in heat up to 53 degrees celsius and down
to freezing overnight. ‘When we were based in Broken
Hill you moved, worked toward Menindee, then relocate
to Menindee and work back the other way.’
“My first impressions when I started as a ’hairy leg’ at
Broken Hill.. the first day I went out in the bush, and
wondered ‘what the …. , no people, no shops, nowhere
to get a drink – after a while you started to enjoy it –
mostly the blokes, the cameraderie of the gangs (usually
3 Cited in Mark Hearn, op.cit., p156
4 Interview with Rex Sorby, in Hearn, p155
5 Interview with Mark Sheargold, May 2005
6 Ibid.
144
consisting of a dozen men 2 flagmen, ganger, machine
operators), the closeness and the drinking and the
interdependence, the isolation”. 5
In a wry understatement, Mark describes the conditions
in the desert as ‘fairly basic’. “Your facilities were
pretty much what you took with you – some shelter, an
eski to keep tucker cool, and something to drink. Even
then there was no sun block, hats or glasses, or ear
muffs, you supplied your own uniform – usuallly boots
shorts and a singlet Every ganger carried a small
temperature gauge – once it became too hot couldn’t
work the rail, not because the conditions were too hard
to work, but because it would affect the rail if they
became overheated.” 6
In many of the ‘bush’ locations, the main personal
contact was with the members of your gang, other gangs
and the local indigenous populations. Many of the
perway workers were also aboriginal workers, and most
speak of the closeness of the gangs without any ‘racial’
concerns. As one worker described it, the gangs were a
‘rag tag of people from all sorts of backgrounds and
from all over.’ Others reflect upon what the local
indigenous people must have thought about these ‘weird
buggers’ doing this work out in the middle of nowhere.’
Max Harrison was a thermit welder’s assistant – cutting
and replacing rail at West Avalon and beyond in the
1970s. Their gang worked west towards Broken Hill
‘out in the desert’ replacing sleepers, maintenance work
on the track, lifting rails and the like. “Then you’d have
to cut and replace the rail manually, hammer and a hot
set, pretty hard work, but you got used to it. In a normal
day you’d get your food and drink together for the day,
jumped on a trike – base wagon, that you rode
sidesaddle – rode the trike out to the worksite. There
Ganger moving gear by trilke
*On Wooden Rails
were eight of ten in the gang, and mostly we’d travel out
and back during the day.” 7
Rex Rosser started in the perway at Peak Hill in 1972 as
part of the Regional Employment and Development
(RED) Scheme. Previously he had been a shearer for
about 10 years. He started in August and figured that
he’d pick up about an extra $100 which would provide
christmas for the kids.
Peak Hill was part of the Dubbo Division – which went
almost out to Broken Hill.
“Most of the work was manual – we travelled out each
day, up to about 50 or 60 km. There were about twenty
or twenty five in the gang, we’d do ballast cleaning,
tamping, re-sleeping – it was hard work, but most of us
were from a farming background - knew about hard
work and we weren’t afraid of it. Some didn’t last long,
they’d come on to the job and leave soon afterwards.
One bloke in a gang of mine started at Mt Victoria and
lasted 45 minutes.“ 8
Rex is quick to draw attention to how relative any
working conditions are and how one person’s misery is
another’s joy. He winces at the thought of some of the
work people are asked to perform on the railways that
are considerably worse than the physical work of the
perway, such as picking up ‘used needles on stations’.
He also tells of not believing the stories of conditions in
some of the cuttings, until working a week in one of
them. “There were cuttings that you would work and not
see the sun at all during the day, Some cuttings where
they’d only get a couple of sleepers per man down in a
day - and go through a new pickhead every two and a
half days – that’s how hard it was”.
Not Family Friendly
Stan and Jimmy Burns worked as fettlers around Griffith
and recount memories of the 1930s and 1940s and the
pressures on family life:
“It was tough and especially for young married men
working sometimes hundreds of miles away from their
homes and families. They’d work three weeks at a time
and make up time to get home. This was unreal. I think
it wasn’t so bad for the single man, but for a young
married man it was a shocking life.” 9
Mark Sheargold remembers feeling and experiencing
the isolation and distance from his family, when his
wife’s grandmother died . He was stuck between
7 Interview with Max Harrison, June 2005
8 Interview with Rex Rosser, July 2005
9 Stan Burns cited in Hearn, op.cit., p157
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
Railway vans used by fettlers families for accommodation, 1905
(Bicentennial Copying Project, State Library of NSW)
Ivanhoe and Darnick and it took him three days to get
home. Mark decided not long after this incident that the
‘ life of a gypsy fettler was not conducive to a good
marriage’, so moved across to loco, where the local
depot was only 100 metres from his home.
Max Harrison took the same view. He was a young man,
recently married with a young family. He decided to
return to Parkes and take any job to get back into town.
Initially, Max took the lowest job in the yard, oiling
points, just to have some form of stable and regular
family life.
Controlling the Gang
While some gangers had reputations as being a ‘bit
hard’, mostly the relationships within the gangs were
close and they worked as a team. The best ganger was
the one who looked after his men and this was mostly
the case. The protocols and supervisory skills may not
make it into the modern management manuals, with the
ganger often being the biggest and hardest man on the
team and prepared to enforce his instructions ‘directly’.
The perway gangs didn’t have much to do with other rail
workers – they mostly didn’t see train crews and others,
so fettlers stuck together and close rivalry and
competition existed between gangs.
Rex Rosser spent most of his 30 years on the perway as
a Traffic Liaison Ganger, in charge of gangs working all
over the state. There were no shortage of the traditional
ganger, who were used to having things done their way.
Rex found a lot of gangers were stubborn and didn’t
want to hear how best to get the job done.
“A Lot of them worked on fear and intimidation, rather
than leadership. There were too many people saying ‘go
on, instead of ‘come on’. I was raised with an attitude of
*On Wooden Rails
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
seeking the ideas and opinions of others. Its easier to
get in and get the job done together, and people respect
you more for it. The stubborn ones who didn’t want to
hear the ideas of the guys would just do it their way, and
would often get it wrong.”
Alf Taylor described some of the tensions that could
exist between fettlers and their gangers:
“I was on the extra-gang at Woy Woy in 1933, I lived in
a tent, there was no morning tea or afternoon tea and
you’d have to be on the job – it may be three or five miles
away – and be out there by 7.30 am. The bloody gangers
in those days, if you weren’t finished your breakfast and
you had your billy on the boil, he’d come and kick it over
and you’d go – or you wouldn’t go. I’ve seen ‘em
fighting around the toolbox with dogs and metal and
everything, chucking it at the gangers.” 10
Putting Together a Gang
There are many stories of amusing and not-so-amusing
characters around the perway. Most recollections are
fond and of entertaining characters who would provide
relief from the hard work and make the day go more
happily and quickly. The gangs were made up of all sorts
of people, locals, newly arrived migrants, recruited to
the railways with little or no English language,
indigenous workers from the rural areas and people
coming in from surrounding regions. There was also a
period during the 1980s when women seeking equal
employment opportunity found work on the perway.
Most of the perway gangs employed a number of
indigenous workers. The Peak Hill gang of the 1970s
consisted of ‘Blokes from all over – Condoblin (100
kms) Dubbo, quite a few aboriginal blokes’ . Rex Rosser
recalls “Dibby Smith – an aboriginal ganger – all got on
really well, see we grew up with these fellas, if there
were any problems we’d always work it out. An
aboriginal bloke worked for me for almost 30 years –
I’ve got enormous respect for him - salt of the earth, he’s
still a mate today. I had more trouble with white people,
and Poms, than any aboriginal worker.” 11
Max Harrison describes the gang as “terrific blokes and
really supportive. There were three or four aboriginal
blokes in the gang, which was common. I still remember
them, Albert, Chikka and Larry… we all got on really
well, part of the team.”
Mark Sheargold also has tales of an aboriginal ganger
10 Cited in Hearn, p 157
11 Interview with Rex Rosser, July 2005
12 Interview with Mark Sheargold
146
Railway Cutting, Hawkesbury
who provided many entertaining distractions. “There
was this one character, he was six foot three skinny as
rake, aboriginal bloke – he’d spent 15 years in lock up
– now working as a traffic liaison ganger – workforce
and train control. He was a drinker extraordinaire,
tough and funny, but he was scared of cockroaches. He
would go walk about, just take off for a couple of weeks
at a time. When he was around he spun a great yarn –
very entertaining.” 12
In the early 1980s, there were significant campaigns
around equal employment opportunity for women and in
particular, in traditional male dominated industries. A
successful case was brought by a group of women in
Wollongong against BHP’s discriminatory employent
practices. Rex Rosser was the first ganger to have a
group of female workers employed in his gang at
Katoomba in about 1983. Seven women fettlers came
onto the job at Katoomba and women were later
employed in gangs in other locations.
“At first I wasn’t in favour of it at all – just saw it as
creating problems on the job and amongst the gangs. Of
the seven, four left pretty well straight up, another one
got pregnant. A lot of blokes weren’t suited to the work
either – swinging an eighteen pound hammer is fierce
*On Wooden Rails
work. We gave one of the new women an eighteen pound
hammer – she lifted it and went down the embankment
backwards. The other three stayed for a while – they got
there and just found the work too heavy. One woman
[Tracey Wallace] stayed on in our gang for years – she
was good, she was a young woman, she wanted to be
there, she wanted the job, a good worker, she’d put in a
solid day on the jack hammer – didn’t phase her at all.” 13
Rex Rosser claims that most of the gang didn’t mind the
work and others would jack up – trying to do it easy.
“There was one bloke – ‘Skeeta’ that I knew before the
railways – I learned after a while that on every job there
was a ‘skeeta’ – a little bloke always crying about the
work, always complaining, moaning, whinging about
the job”.
The Perway Motel
The amenities and living conditions on the perway can
be generally summarised as appalling. However we may
choose to romanticise the rough and rugged life of
working the lines in remote locations, the reality check
is never far from the edge of the imagination. The work
involved continuous work on the maintenance and
overhaul of allocated sections of track, usually covering
vast distances and a long way from any recognisable
settlement. Starting at one end of the section then
working back from the other. The verses from Sandy
Hollow line, depicting an attitude of cheap human life
and concern for the more valuable assets such as horses,
continually come to mind.
Rex Sorby described the living quarters and amenities
when he was working at Guyra. “You used to have to
cook in a galley. Used to be an old chimney sort of affair
with a couple of sheets of iron around it, a roof on the
top …. It was also the only source of heating in cold
weather….We had these six-by-eight tents and the wind
used to start blowing across this great lake up there and
it would start snowing and we used to get out and knock
the snow off, shake the tents, so the snow would fall off
the bloody fly, so the tent wouldn’t collapse on us.” 14
In other locations the ‘perway motel’ would consist of a
camp of lean-tos and makeshift shelter, some would
have permanent, basic barracks accommodation and
others still, old rail carriages would serve as the
accommodation. All would comprise shared facilities
and amenities insofar as they were in existence. Those
workers who were on the perway in the 1970s and
1980s, also speak of the ‘portable accommodation’ –
and/or tents and the shared crude amenities
13 Interview with Rex Rosser, July 2005
14 Rex Sorby cited in Hearn, p158
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
Social life on the Perway
Fettlers have a reasonable reputation for liking a drink
and enjoying the lighter side of the job when they
finished up after a long shift and hit the local pub or have
a few drinks at camp. Perhaps the origin of the term
‘hairy legs’, has more to do with camel-like drinking
habits than the shorts worn on the perway. All have
stories to tell of an array of interesting characters.
We’d socialise together – at lunch have a game of
euchre, play a game of cricket or ‘paddy melon bowls’
[paddy melon was about size of lawn bowl, played the
same alongside the track]. After work, you’d have a
drink, some who worked hard also like to play hard –
nearest pub was about 15 kms away, and its not like you
could go to the pictures.” 15
Mark Sheargold recalls a light moment at Menindi – “I
was enjoying a nice cool shower under a big overhead
watershed off in my own world. I didn’t relaise that I
was standing naked under the shower surrounded by
about 45 aboriginal women laughing at the skinny little
white boy.”
Rex Rosser also has no doubts that he and many of his
colleagues have contributed enough to have substantial
share holdings in the odd brewery. He tells the story of
a christmas party that his gang had in King’s Cave,
between Linden and Woodford, when they carried a keg
in on their shoulders for the christmas party, which was
enjoyed by all.
Trackwork, City Underground
*On Wooden Rails
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
Mechanisation
A report by the American consultancy firm Ebasco,
aimed at modernising the NSW system and reducing
employee numbers, found that in the Ways and
Branch, the Department employed 8537 maintenance
employees, 1801 employees in extra-gangs, relaying
rails and sleepers, and 6736 employees in smaller gangs
repairing and maintaining tracks, structures and bridges.
Then ARU Branch President, Jim Walshe, explains that
prior to moves to mechanise the perway, everything was
done by hand. “We had every four miles along the track
a gang fettlers, usually a ganger and four men. And all
they had was manual equipment, there was no such
thing as mechanical means of making holes in sleepers
for dog spikes or anything of that nature. Everything
was done by hand.” 16
The Ebasco report was the beginning of ad hoc
mechanisation and amalgamation of the perway into
larger gangs. Apart from the tricycles described by the
Commissioners in 1894, the 1960s and 1970s saw the
introduction of different equipment to make the work
easier and to reduce the required numbers of perway
workers.
Initial mechanisation included ‘spot air’ machines that
made holes in the sleepers for the dog spikes, these were
later made in the sleepers before they left the depot. In
time, there were also graders, spacers and slowly to the
heavy track work machinery that operates today.
Frank Slavin, the ARU western organiser in the 1960s,
points to the pride fettlers have in their work in tending
their section of line and how the introduction of
mechanisation was perceived as further devaluing this
and the quality of the workmanship.
“Most of them, strangely enough, looked after as if it
was a garden, and then when this mecahnisation came
in they got 40 miles of length with machines doing the
work that they used to do by hand. They no longer felt
pride in it because of the machines.“ 17
Year of the Perway
The conditions and hardships on the perway were to
reach breaking point in the late 1970s, with what
became known as the Year of the Perway campaign in
1979, which included the longest strike on the railways
since 1917. Prior to this, many workers on the perway
15 Interview with Max Harrison, June 2005
16 Jim Walshe, cited in Hearn, p 153
17 Frank Slavin, cited in hearn, p 155
18 ARU Journal Railroad, June-July 1979
148
‘just accepted’ that this was the job, or that they were
‘lucky to have the job’ and couldn’t do much about the
poor conditions.
In 1978 the union demanded an upgrading allowance of
$20 per week for members on the perway, to address
general conditions and additional requirements of the
massive track upgrading program after the Granville
train disaster. The claim also included an increase in the
camping-out allowance, improved amenities and supply
of protective clothing.
The union executive decided to focus efforts on these
grievances and claims by declaring 1979, ‘the year of
the perway’. This campaign is described in more detail
in chapter 3. Arbitration of the matter dragged on and
members started to become agitated at what they saw as
the Public Transport Commission’s delays. Stop work
meetings were held around the state and strike action
lasting ten days was taken in May 1979, action that
Transport Minister Cox described as ‘straight out
bloodymindedness, which virtually borders on mob
rule.’
As with the escalation of feeling by the rank and file
expressed in other major disputes in the past, the union
leadership found the response of the men well beyond
what they had anticipated. The union leadership in
trying to contain the perway dispute to a planned
strategy responded angrily to rank-and-file actions and
propaganda. In a RailRoad editorial, ARU Branch
Secretary, Jack Maddox accused ‘union knockers’ for
the distribution of a Rank and File circular to striking
perway and signal branch members and misinformation
about the union’s efforts. 18
Mechanising Trackwork
*On Wooden Rails
Arbitration didn’t deliver all of the demands, but did
result in a new award, with better career structure and
wage increases. To achieve their final outcomes, the
perway rank and file again took strike action in
February, 1980. In defying the directives of the union
executive, the perway men gained respect from the
union leadership and from the general industry that had
previously discounted the perway as the lower end of the
railway tree.
The general sentiment around the campaign can be
19 Railroad, June-July, 1979, p 4
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
COMRADE FETTLER
Did you ever give a thought to the Navvy on the line
summarised by a resolution carried at a meeting at the
Railway Institute in Sydney on 10 June 1979, agreeing
to return to work. “This meeting of Metropolitan and
South Coast Per Way and Signalling Branch members
recognises, that after 40 years of depressed wages and
conditions, our combined strength, solidarity and unity
has enabled us to win the first round. We recognise that
our struggle has only commenced and urge members not
to relax their vigilance until all our outstanding claims
are satisfactorily resolved .”19
The man who has to run his length, in weather wet or fine
He gets starvation wages, and lives in a wayside shack
To keep the road in safety, along the Broken Hill track
The summer brings its nursery, with dust and sandy blight
But the Fettler must keep toiling, to keep the track all right
For that pride of Mr. Hartigan, the Flying Diesel train
That shoots along at seventy-five, through dust or blinding rain
Now the Navvy has demanded a shorter working week
And an increase in his wages, and made the bosses squeak
About the mighty deficit, and revenue being light
But these excuses do not help the Fettler in his plight
So it's up to every Railwayman, in city or outback
To help the Navvy win his fight, along the Broken Hill track
If the Fettler must keep toiling to keep the track all right,
It's up the wages, shorten the week, or else expect a strike
(Anon, (1939) "Magnet" Newspaper of the Council of Railway
Shop Committees)
*On Wooden Rails
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
150
THE SANDY HOLLOW LINE
The sun was blazing in the sky and waves of shimmering heat
Glared down on the railway cutting, we were half dead on our feet,
And the ganger stood on the bank of the cut and he snarled at the men below,
"You'd better keep them shovels full or all you cows 'll go.
I never saw such a useless mob, you'd make a feller sick,
As shovel men you're hopeless, and you're no good with the pick."
There were men in the gang who could belt him with a hand tied at the back
But he had power behind him and we dare not risk the sack.
So we took it all in silence, for this was the period when
We lived in the great depression and nothing was cheaper than men.
And we drove the shovels and swung the picks and cursed the choking dust;
We'd wives and hungry kids to feed so toil in the heat we must.
But still the ganger drove us on, we couldn't take much more;
We prayed for the day we'd get the chance to even up the score.
A man collapsed in the heat and dust, he was carried away to the side.
It didn't seem to matter if the poor chap lived or died.
But one of the government horses fell and died there in the dray,
They hitched two horses to him and they dragged the corpse away.
The ganger was a worried man and he said with a heavy sigh:
"It is a bloody terrible thing to see a good horse die.
There much too valuable to lose, they cost us quite a lot
And I think it is a wicked shame to work them while it's hot.
So we will take them to the creek and spell them in the shade,
You men must all knock off at once. Of course you won't be paid."
And so we plodded to our camps and it seemed to our weary brains,
We were no better than convicts, though we didn't wear the chains,
And in those drear depression days, we were unwanted men,
But we knew that when a war broke out, we'd all be heroes then.
And we'd be handed a rifle and forced to fight for the swine,
Who tortured us and starved us, on the Sandy Hollow Line.
(Duke Tritton, 1937. Sydney Bush Music Club.)
*On Wooden Rails
Drainage Gang, Casino 1931
Viaduct, Lithgow
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
Manual and motorised trikes, Condobolin
Fettlers Camp (Bicentennial Copying Project, State Library of NSW)
*On Wooden Rails
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
152
Station Master Ingleburn, 1920 (Bicentennial Copying Project, State Library of NSW)
*On Wooden Rails
On the Stations
The railway stations of the cities and the country towns
were the public face of the New South Wales Railways.
They were also the centre of travel and freight activities,
as well as community life. The people employed on the
stations performed a range of duties from porters
assisting with luggage and loading and unloading
freight, the ticketing and book-keeping, signals,
maintaining points, tracks and platforms. The
Refreshment Rooms or kiosks would service the hungry
travellers, while the larger stations provided
accommodation. The guards would give the ‘all clear’ as
gate-keepers tended the crossings. The goods and freight
once moved by rail covered everything from the mail, to
groceries, fresh agricultural produce, coal and wheat and
wool, to heavy industrial machinery. Most stations
would move the needle as well as the haystack. The
stations ranged from modest timber buildings to grand
and ornate public buildings dominating the centre of
many towns.
A Brief History of Sydney Station
When it was first opened in 1855 the main station was
named Sydney Station until 1905, and was colloquially
known (as well as in official dispatches) as ‘Redfern’,
reflecting its distance from the city centre in an area
known as the Cleveland Paddocks. This name was later
dropped as the former Eveleigh Station was renamed
Redfern in 1906, by which time a second station had
been built and was known as Central.
The original station was solely for passenger use, but
soon expanded to accommodate goods yards, parcels
and freight. The station was serviced by horse-drawn
cabs and buses to Circular Quay, by way of George, Pitt
and Elizabeth Streets. Later these were replaced by
steam trams. By 1864, the railways had reached Penrith
and Picton, requiring further expansion of station
facilities.
Commissioner Eddy had requested that the terminal
station be moved closer to the city in the late 1880s, but
legislation for the new (and current Central Station)
wasn’t passed until 1901. The construction of the new
station required the removal of a number of buildings
and resumption of land around the site, including the
steam tramway depot, a convent, church, and a cemetery
at Devonshire Street. The first platform and two storeys
of the main building were opened in 1906.
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
Wollongong Station Staff, 1928 (Wollongong Library/Illawarra Historical Society)
Yards, carriage sheds and sidings, platforms and signal
boxes were added and remodeled to service the Central
Station. The distinctive clock tower was added and
began operating in 1921. The modifications continued
with electrification, and the construction of the
underground railway, signals and communications
advances. The station also boasted a grand Refreshment
Room. Eventually, the new station, which was separate
from the site of the first and second stations, was
extended in 1961 to go across Devonshire Street and
back onto the site of the old station.
The unfinished business of Central includes the two
‘ghost platforms’ or platforms 26 and 27, that sit above
platforms 24 and 25, complete with lighting, no tiles,
and space for track. Each has a short length of tunnel
from each of the platforms that lead nowhere. They were
constructed at the same time as the Eastern Suburbs
railway, in case they were required in future. 1
The impressive Mortuary Station pre-dates the
developments around the new Central Station. It was
opened in 1869 in Regent Street. It was one of three
cemetery lines that were operated by the New South
Wales Railways. These were the lines to Sandgate
Cemetery in Newcastle, which operated for 100 years
from 1881. The other two lines were to Sydney’s
Rookwood cemetery, opened in 1867 and the branch to
Woronora Cemetery opened in 1900.
“Impressive arches shelter part of the platform and
enclose the track. Hard sandstone is used for the
columns, parapets and arches while the softer Pyrmont
sandstone is used for the walls. …. Funeral trains,
1For a detailed history of Sydney Central Station, see John Oakes, Sydney’s Central, Australian railway Historical Socierty,
NSW 2002
*On Wooden Rails
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
complete with hearse wagon loaded with coffins,
departed from this station for Rookwood Cemetery. The
funeral trains would also pick up mourners as required
at stations along the route. The line to Rookwood
Cemetery closed on 29 December 1948 and that to
Woronora on 27 August 1944. “ 2 Mortuary Station has
been classified by the National Trust and Australian
Heritage Commission, as a magnificent example of
colonial architecture. It was extensively restored and reopened
by Premier Neville Wran in 1985.
Many of the workers who built a career in the Traffic
Branch of the railways started as a humble junior station
assistant or porter, performing a range of often menial
tasks, from general cleaning, running errands, to oiling
the points and changing signal lanterns and indicators.
From there a person could move through the ranks in
signalling, take up a position in the guards van, or
become ASM or Station Master in charge of their own
station.
Ken Sullivan joined the railways as a junior Porter at
Narranderra as a 15 year old in 1958. At that time in
Narranderra, ‘300-500 people worked in the railways
out of a population of about 3,000’ . His father and uncle
were railwaymen, so Ken had grown up within the
railways culture. For his four pounds per week in wages,
the junior porter would perform wide ranging tasks such
as: “working telegraph, switchboard, morse code – there
were no automatic telephones then – all code rings,
carriage cleaning, call-out of guards, wake them up.
You’d be taking train numbers and sending train loads
details to Junee control, clean out the freight vans,
clean offices, keep the fires up in the barracks.” 3
Lloyd Holmes, who retired as ASM at Albury after 40
years on the job, described some of the mayhem in
station communications and activity.
“Copious volumes of wires poured into Albury’s
telegraph office via a pair of teleprinters, giving train
loads from both directions, livestock transit advices,
passenger loads and Canas [standard telegraphic code
for the passenger count, first class, second class and
sleepers on passenger trains], Per Way speed
restrictions, loaded freight wagons to be diverted,
special train movements, delayed wagons to be
expedited, empty wagons and equipment book-outs, staff
and rostering arrangements, transit of corpses and
2 Ibid., p57
3 Interview with Ken Sullivan, March 2005
4 Lyod Holmes, The ASM at Albury, Australian Railway History, January 2005, p8
5 Cited in Hearn, op.cit., p120
154
dozens of other items to do with what was then a very
busy and diversified transport system, operating to its
charter of a common carrier…..” 4
The station workforce was mostly male (with the
exception of the women in the Refreshment Rooms and
related service), until the 1950s. Mary Stratton thinks
that she was probably one of ‘the first women that
started on the platforms’. Mary was employed as a
station assistant at Town Hall. “Well, when I first started
on the railway I was doing barrier work…then I went to
platforms. I was doing platforms and cloak room and
parcels at Town Hall….you had to keep the escalators
clean, the stairs clean, the platform clean and the
control room clean, in between putting the indicators up
and sending trains off….and by the time you finished you
would be so filthy and exhausted. Then you’d have a
shower – oh yes, you weren’t allowed to have a shower
before you bundied off for your meal break.” 5
The Current RTBU Branch Secretary, Nick Lewocki
started work on the stations in 1963 He originally sat an
entrance examination as an apprentice fitter and turner.
The results were not good enough to get a job in Sydney,
but was later offered an apprenticeship in Broadmeadow
in the Hunter. Knowing how innocent and
impressionable he was, Nick’s father wouldn’t allow
him to go it alone at 16 and be ‘led astray by rough
types’. He asked friends about other jobs on the
railways, and in particular, John Melezko – station
assistant at Minto – who told him that working the
station was a good job. Nick then re-applied and went
through basic examinations and was successful. He then
went into the training program at the Railway Institute at
Devonshire Street for six weeks before qualifying and
going out onto Glenfield Station as a junior station
assistant.
Wollongong Station 1950
(Wollongong Library/Illawarra Historical Society)
*On Wooden Rails
Internal arches, Central Station 2005
Nick remembers his first day on the job when he walked
into the Station Master’s office in his heavy black wool
uniform and cap. He was informed that he had arrived
‘just in time for clean-up’ of the tickets, mess and broken
furniture all over the flloors from a burglary the previous
night. “The roles of the junior station assistant included
cleaning, cleaning toilets (still pan toilets prior to
septic) and painting the urinals, check deliveries of
every train that came in, and after the Station Master left
you sold tickets, answered the telephone and dealt with
parcels basically run the station as a 16 year old”. 6
Nick was working as a relief at Glenfield, so also found
himself working at Cabramatta, Liverpool and the
Campbelltown Line, and by the time he had finished on
the stations had worked most locations in the
metropolitan area. The Hurlstone Agricultural College
was nearby to Glenfield, and one of the jobs for the
juniors was to book the tickets and organise the luggage
of the boarders at the College.. “You’d load their
luggage onto the old parcels van – there could be a
thousand pieces of luggage a day when these kids were
going home for their holidays.”
Tom Owens, who started in 1927 and worked at Darling
Harbour from 1935, describes the regimented and
fastidious Station Master of the 1930s. “Jackson was the
Stationmaster, and they were 100 per cent in those days,
everything had to be up to date – they’d come to work at
half past seven in the morning and make a tour of
inspection before they went into their office – they’d go
right around the goods shed and up into the yards and
go through all the points and everything – all the trucks
in the yard, and get the dates of the tickets, everything
was done in detail. They even went to the loco and
checked the engines.” 7
6 Interview with Nick Lewocki, April 2005
7 Hearn op. cit., p 60
8 Dave Anderson, Railway Daze, Unpublished Diary
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
Dave Anderson, the Station Master at Hazelbrook
describes a lighter moment to some of this attention to
detail. “In the 1960s we had to do a collected ticket
return every month. God knows what bacteria were
deposited on these old tickets ! Some masochistic clerk
who wanted every collected ticket placed in separate
piles in station and number order decided this. Ted
Whitton, the Station Master at Blaxland, checked his
thoroughly, so one day I was concentrating on my pile of
tickets, dealing them out like a card shark into separate
piles. Suddenly there was a crash of a walking stick on
the window with the cry from an old woman who I
obviously ignored in my concentration, yelled out ‘Is
that all you have to do – play patience!” 8
Other work that had to be performed by station
assistants included having to polish the outside of the
diesel locomotives, carry out work in the yards to keep
them maintained and tidy, oiling the points, night shift
could include wiping down seats and inside of carriages,
cleaning and emptying toilets on the passenger trains. It
would involve assisting with shunting, and relieving in
the parcels and goods offices, as well as flagging on the
tracks. If you qualified as a safeworking station
assistant, after completing the safeworking school and
qualifying in safeworking, this would enable work in the
signal boxes on stations.
The conditions on most stations and yards, considered
acceptable and the norm, were very basic and
uncomfortable for staff. There was no running water in
the station, no staff ‘kitchenette’, lockers or fans.
for a drink of water or to use toilets. As Nick Lewocki
explains, ‘it was hot, miserable and dusty, but people
weren’t jumping up and down about it, what was then
accepted as the norm nowadays would be rejected as
intolerable’. Nick describes having his eyes opened to
the benefits of unionism around some actions on staff
amenities in the early 1970s. “ A friend, Brian Bradley
– relief ASM said to me’ these are bloody shocking
conditions, Lewocki ‘why are you putting up with
them?’ – we’ll get the union in’. A union officer turned
up looked at the conditions and put in a call to get the
local Inspector - who was very nervous as the union
officer yelled and screamed and threatened to shut the
yard down. We got new wet weather gear for everyone,
new ballasts in the yard, and a demountable building,for
staff facilities.”
*On Wooden Rails
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
He took up the issue of staff amenities when he became
a Traffic Industrial Officer with the ARU in 1979. The
union was well pleased when it first got permission from
the railways for staff to buy their own second-hand
fridge and have it installed on the station. After that, it
was decided that a minimal standard for staff facilities
would include lockers, stove, hot and cold water, and air
conditioning.
A PORTER'S LIFE
Cleaning cars, polishing brass,
Sweeping brake and cleaning glass,
Juggling samples, pushing brooms,
Cleaning point and sweeping rooms,
Chasing truck around the yard,
Waiting on a big fat guard,
Nipping tickets, collecting freight,
Shining scales and cleaning weights,
Unloading trucks, folding sheets,
Trimming lamps and dusting seats,
Climbing signals, trimming wicks,
Using shovels rakes and picks,
Turning cheese knobs, shunting train,
Pulling staffs, handling hoops,
Loading fowl and chicken coop
Loading wool and weighing truck,
Handling turkeys, geese and duck,
Dodging bosses, watching rail,
Loading parcels, goods and mail,
Selling tickets, weighing logs,
Way-billing prams, goats and dogs
Climbing ladders without fear,
Filling tanks and loading beer,
Pushing pens, and answering phone,
Filing numbers, labelling bones,
Filling tenders up with water,
Now who wouldn't be Porter?
Source: Allen Mclnnes’ book ‘Folklore of the
Australian Railway Man’, Railway
Review, February 1975
Goods and Parcels
9 Cited in Gunn, op.cit., p156
10 Ken Ames, From Grease to Gold Braid, Australian Railway Historical Society, NSW, 2001, p 47
156
Railway stations were a vital cog in the transportation of
all manner of goods and parcels, from small personal
items to heavy freight consignments. Stations goods and
parcels activity included everything from fresh produce,
livestock, personal items, mail, rail workers pay,
medical supplies, wool, coal, wheat, racing pigeons,
groceries to supplement the limited stocks of the local
store, mail order items and gifts. When they talk of
‘mixed trains’ that’s what they meant – a train could
include passengers, chooks, cows, wool, clothing and
footwear, fresh produce and a wide range of small
parcels.
The issue of the railways being able to profitably move
a vast array of freight has always been a preoccupation.
In 1878, Commissioner Charles Goodchap reported on
the variety and classes of goods traffic carried. Firewood
outdistanced coal in terms of weight and was the leader
in the specialist categories, which included shale, hay,
livestock and road metal. While the jewel in the crown
was wool. “There is no large item of traffic which does
not contribute to our net earnings.” 9 The list of reported
lost or diverted items published each week gives a clear
picture of the diversity of goods transported across the
network.
There were travelling post offices attached to the night
running, where mail would be sorted and bundled and
put into canvas bags and dispatched accordingly. These
were handed to porters at mainline and junction stations
for forwarding to their destinations. Some Stations had
large mail boxes installed in their waiting rooms to
deposit the bags of mail. Guards could deposit and
collect mail bags from these.
Former Station Master Ken Ames describes the situation
in Kingsvale in the 1960s – “The local store only sold
certain items and it was necessary to have our fresh meat,
bread, fruit, vegetables and chemist items sent out by
train. Burrow’s Butchery, Rendall’s Bakery, Favero’s
Green Grocer’s and Stewart’s Chemist at Young all ran
monthly accounts for country people and forwarded these
commodities daily, or as required. All railway staff were
entitled to have their foodstuffs etc carried free when the
address labels were endorsed ‘OS’ (on service)”. 10
While Darling Harbour Goods Yard was the central
location for goods and small freight traffic for much of
the life of the railway, this changed with the purchase of
the Seatainer terminal at Chullora in 1983 for
*On Wooden Rails
development as the headquarters of all general and
parcels freight. The development of the Trackfast Centre
at Chullora was a reversal by the State Rail Authority on
its earlier decisions in 1980, and contrary to trends in
other states, to phase out small freight and parcels from
the rail system.
Station Regulars
In addition to the regular commuters that station staff get
to know in the course of their daily work, there are
others that see the station and the staff as a good place to
socialise and have a chat. Then there are the ‘characters’
that become known, the eccentrics or the ‘out of luck’
swaggies or homeless people to whom the stations
provide refuge as well as a social space.
“At times we have homeless men who are often
pensioners who travel around the system and get to
know the staff. Many are a nuisance, but one you
couldn’t help but like was Kevin. His hotel was the
deserted station at Bell. He’d sleep at Bell overnight,
then head to Blaxland for the for the day with me until 1
pm. Then he’d travel to Emu Plains to spend the
afternoon with the Assistant Station Master Dave
Sloane. I would put extra food in my bag for him and
would have to shout him a hamburger and chips until
pension day. After payday he might disappear for a
month or two, but like an old smell, and he did have an
odour at times, he’d turn up again.
11 Dave Anderson, Railway Daze, unpublished diary, p 7
12 Ken Ames, op.cit., p57
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
Produce for market, Woodstock, 1906
One day before payday he was hungry and I was broke,
so I told him why not take up the metal grates on the
platform, clean out the rubbish, and maybe he’d find
some cash. He refused, as work was not part of his
lifestyle. He went to the loo and I took up the grate
outside the office, placed a crumpled $20 note in the
debris, replaced the grate and waited. He returned and
I explained how easy it would be to do the job. I lifted
the grate, rummaged around and with a look of wonder
I found the $20 ! Of course he immediately grabbed the
tools and cleaned the grates and found about $5.” 11
Ken Ames tells the story of the gentleman Swaggie who
would appear at Kingsvale every Easter. “All his worldly
possessions were carried in an old suitcase, on his back
and in his bedroll. He was an elderly gentleman with
snow-white hair naturally given the nickname of
‘Snowy’. As he was clean in his habits I used to allow
him to stay on his short vacation in the main waiting
room.
He would do his cooking on an open fire a safe distance
from the railway station. Our visitor was never any
trouble and always cleaned up any mess that he made.
My wife used to send over a hot meal and other
‘goodies’ to help him.
On Easter Sunday he would attend the service at our
local church and although he wore an assortment of
crumpled clothes, they were always clean and his boots
were always polished. After Easter Monday, he would
just disappear into the night, as quietly as he came.” 12
*On Wooden Rails
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
158
THE GATES OF 23
Have you ever stood for hours
On a cold, wet concrete floor
Clipping tickets as they pass you
Till your hands are stiff & sore
And when you roar out ‘Show em’
All the flappers murmur ‘Gee’
That’s the way we put our time in
Underneath on 23.
The stools are just to look at
Never dare to take a seat
Even tho’ your legs are weary
And you feel ‘all in’ and ‘beat’
For orders are you must not sit
It seems all wrong to me
So we stand and clip the tickets
Underneath on 23.
The lights seem placed to trick you
And your weary downcast eyes
Glance at the rushing tickets
As they swiftly pass you by
And a sleek-haired sheik from Carlton
Roars out ‘Let’s go home for tea’
As he shoulders past a flapper
In the rush for 23.
Of cranks there’s always plenty
Abuse—we get a lot
The ladies call you ‘nuisance’
And the drunks are pretty hot
For they always seem to wander
When they’re full of beer and glee
Down to where you punch the tickets
Underneath on 23.
But the trains will still be roaring
And the crowds still pushing past
When I’m old & aged & pensioned
And a seat I have at last
When I sit in my old armchair
By the fire, I’ll always see
The portals that are always rushed
The gates of 23.
(Anon 1928, The Ticket Collectors Soliloquy, "Railroad" Journal of the
Australian Railways Union).
*On Wooden Rails
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
A Day in the Life
-The ASM at Albury
Lyoyd Holmes worked on the New South Wales Railways for 40 years, starting at Clyde Wagon
as ASM at Albury in 1987. He recounted some of his experiences at a model railway seminar at Petersham in 1997. The
following is selective extracts from the article.
The Traffic Branch Depot Officer
“The requirements for a traffic branch depot officer on the Department of Railways NSW have always been demanding.
Among the necessary attributes were dedication, sobriety, patience, commonsense and practicality, a good measure of
omniscience, and excellent knowledge of the Rules and Regulations, both books of the General Appendices, relevant
sections of the Local Appendix and a more than nodding acquaintance with the Railway By-Laws.
Toward the staff he must show no favour, display firmness, honesty and not a hint of hypocrisy. Time had to be found to
lecture young employees about safe-working practices around a busy and dangerous workplace, and encourage them to
study for departmental examinations through the Railway Institute.
To the public, the officer should present the picture of a neat and competent representative of the system, courteous, friendly,
solicitous of their well-being and forthcoming willingly in imparting any information they may require.” (p. 3)
“As the said depot officer would almost certainly work night and afternoon shifts only, he had to accept the fact that he was
a social outcast and would always be short of sleep.
His family would learn at an early stage to tiptoe around the house in daylight hours, lest they incur the wrath of the sleepstarved.
He was a difficult creature, the depot officer, and while many aspired to the virtues listed above, few consistently achieved
them and just did their best in working environments that were most part, simply archaic.”
“The chargemen at Loco changed shifts at the same time as us, so early in the shift we would confer about trains, engines,
crews and guards, and forecast arrivals from each direction.
Room was the perennial problem in Albury, room to accommodate arriving trains without blocking and delaying the
departing ones……So, quick and early discussions with the shunters and signalmen were vital to make the best of what room
we inherited on each shift.” (p5)
While the majority of our time was taken up with freight train working, we could ill afford not to give the attention necessary
to the many passenger trains that came and went on both gauges. The Spirit of Progress was our busiest train, disgorging
and entraining not only sizeable human cargoes, but profuse quantities of mails, parcels, luggage and sundries.”
Problems with the Public
“Lest any of the ‘modern management’ gurus waving their business college and other qualifications jump to their feet and
challenge this subheading as sacrilegious, even blasphemous, for me to suggest, in this day of flowery jargon such as
‘customer-oriented’ services, problems and the public go hand in hand’. (p11)
“Shortly after I ‘took up’ in Albury, I received a call from the signalman at Albury South box, advising me that a young
woman clad only in a nightdress was sitting on the track at the southern end of the NSW platform. ……It was a very hot
summer afternoon with plenty of light remaining and I was desperately trying to get on top of the book and paperwork…
Not feeling at all confident about my skills of counselling disturbed young women who may or may not be serious about
suicide, I tried a gentle approach……If I called the police she might bolt and perhaps return later when it was dark.
……Thankfully, the incident worked out successfully and at odd times in later years I would see the young woman around
town…” (p12)
“…it was fairly commonplace that we would receive phone calls from one station of the other [on the Victorian side],
advising us that the train conductor wanted police to meet No 41 [Spirit of Progress] on arrival at Albury……We detected
a distinct lack of resolve on the part of the Victorian employees to deal with troublemakers in their own State, preferring to
carry on and dump them in our lap.” (p12)
“In this era, infatuated with the premise that privatisation is the panacea for all of society’s dilemmas, let no one deride and
ridicule the outstanding public enterprise that built, expanded and maintained our State rail system for 133 years from 1855
up to 1988, when the emasculation began in earnest….. Thus, the spirit of the ‘old firm’ will live on as will it’s largely
unsung, but very major contribution to the development and prosperity, of the State it so long and ably served.” (p13)
Source: Lloyd Holmes, Tales or the Rails, Australian Railway History, January 2005.
*On Wooden Rails
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
160
A Day in the Life
-1960s – In the country
Ken Ames’ railway career spanned four decades from 1944. He retired as Station Master at Ingleburn on
medical grounds in 1986, after having served in the mechanical branch, then in the Traffic Branch “worked
in nearly every District except the North Coast, so I have had a full ‘railway life’ and done a lot more things
than the average bloke would not have done in his lifetime and unfortunately, the railway man of today is
unable to do.”
Ken Ames has maintained his interest in the railways through his involvement in the NSW Rail Transport
Museum and Thirlmere Rail Museum. He has also published accounts of his time on the railways, giving
detailed insights into the people and places of the railways. He is currently compiling another book on work
on the railways.
The following extracts recount instances when Ken was Station Master at Kingsvale (situated 228 miles from
Sydney via the South, on the cross-country connection running from Harden on the Southern Line to Blayney
on the Western line) for a decade from 1955, providing a glimpse into life around the country stations.
Duties
“We were responsible for the correct working of the station. These included signal box and complete train
working, attending to all aspects of coaching, parcels and goods traffic, attending to the goods and coaching
accounts and submitting the monthly accounts and returns…….Also the shunting, and cleaning and oiling of
all points, cleaning, trimming and lighting of all signal lamps. Loading, roping and sheeting trucks of wool,
attending to the loading and unloading of sheep vans” (p 46)
Provisions
“The local store only sold certain items and it was necessary to have our fresh meat, bread, fruit, vegetables
and chemist items sent out by train”……..Suppliers ran monthly accounts for country people and forwarded
the goods as required. “All railway staff were entitled to have their foodstuffs etc carried free when the
address labels were endorsed ‘OS’ (on service) “ Ames p47
Fruit and Veg
The first fresh fruit consignment under the new rail loading system commenced. The orchardists brought their
small consignments up and were stacked on the platform, in a position where I could load the cases of fruit,
with the assistance of the guard directly on to the van for Darling Harbour. When the fruit season got into
full swing, I was authorised to employ a casual porter to assist, then later I was allocated a relief porter to
cover the heavy fruit seasons. (Ames p 61)
The Royal Mail
The Post Master General’s mail was transported by rail in the travelling Post Offices that were attached to the
night mail trains running on all mainlines across the state. The mail was place in canvas bags, sealed and
addressed. These were handed to porters at various mainline and junction stations for forwarding to various
destinations.
Rail Pay Bus
On alternate Wednesdays all railways staff on the Harden-Blayney Line, including the Grenfell and Eugowra
Branches, be they salary or wages, were paid in cash by the paymaster travelling in the special rail paybus.
We would all have our pay dockets, so the pay bus would stop and pay the Perway and Bridge Gangs
wherever they were working along the tracks. At stations the men would present their dockets and be paid
direct.
Source: Ken Ames, From Grease to Gold Braid, Australian Railway Historical Society (NSW Division),
Sydney, 2001
*On Wooden Rails
SECOND CLASS WAIT HERE
On suburban railway stations - you may see them as you pass-
There are signboards on the platform saying ‘Wait here second class;’
And to me the whirr and thunder and the cluck of running gear
Seem to be forever saying, saying ‘second class wait here’ -
‘Wait here second class,
‘Second class wait here.’
Seem to be forever saying, saying ‘second class wait here.’
And the second class were waiting in the days of serf and prince,
And the second class are waiting - they've been waiting ever since.
There are gardens in the background, and the line is bare and drear,
Yet they wait beneath a signboard, sneering ‘second class wait here.’
I have waited oft in winter, in the morning dark and damp,
When the asphalt platform glistened underneath the lonely lamp.
Glistened on the brick-faced cutting “Sellum’s Soap” and “Blower’s Beer”,
Glistened on enameled signboards with their “Second class wait here”
Wait here second class, second class wait here",
And the others seemed like burglars, slouched and muffled to the throats,
Standing round apart and silent in their shoddy overcoats,
And the wind among the poplars, and the wires that thread the air,
Seemed to be forever snarling, snarling “second class wait here”.
Wait here second class, second class wait here",
Out, beyond a further suburb, ‘neath a chimney-stack alone
Lays the works of Grinder brothers, with a platform of their own;
A I waited there and suffered, waiting there for many a day,
Slaved beneath a phantom signboard, telling all my hopes to stay.
Wait here second class, second class wait here",
Ah! a man must feel revengeful for a boyhood such as mine.
God! I hate the very houses near the workshop by the line;
And the smell of railway stations, and the roar of running gear,
And the scornful-seeming signboards, saying ‘second class wait here
Wait here second class, second class wait here",
There's a train with Death for driver, that is ever going past,
There will be no class compartments when it's ‘all aboard’ at last
For a long white jasper with an Eden in the rear;
And there won't be any signboards, saying ‘second class wait here.
Wait here second class, second class wait here’.
(Henry Lawson)
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
*On Wooden Rails
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
162
Picton Station, 1963
Corrimal Station (Wollongong Library/Illawarra Historical Society)
Kiama Station 1905 (Wollongong Library/Illawarra Historical Society)
Qurindi Station 1890
Brocklesby Station
*On Wooden Rails
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
A Day in the Life
-Chullora Railway & Migrant Camp
A Shanty Town That Makes the Railways Ashamed
In 1948 a railway camp for railway workers was established near the corner of the Hume Highway and Brunker
Road, Chullora, adjoining the railway workshops. The camp was on a 45 acre (or 18 hectares) site, consisting
of small huts for single men, larger ones (‘Chalets’) for railway staff (drivers, firemen, guards and conductors.
By 1951 the camp was known as Chullora Accommodation Centre for Migrants. The camp was established to
provide accommodation for railway employees transferred from the country and as the Secretary for Railways,
Mr Anderson said, “to meet the urgent requirements of operating staff, drivers, guards and shunters, at Enfield
locomotive depot and marshalling yards”. It was also designed to accommodate displaced persons relocated
under the United Nations Relief Scheme, and allocated work with the railway department.
Originally comprising approximately 20 huts, the camp grew to 640 huts, housing thousands of workers and
their families in crowded and primitive conditions. Most of the huts were one room of 10 feet by nine feet (or
3 metres by 2.75 metres) in size, with a fuel stove, 2 electric lights and 2 powerpoints. Facilities such as laundry
(tub and ironing board), toilets and showers were shared. The camp had an Australian and migrant section.
Migrants were generally Eastern European displaced persons, mostly from Poland.
“In a crowded, run down shanty town at Chullora, 1500 New Australian men, women and children live as
tenants of the New South Wales Department of Railways in 640 huts each one 10 feet by 9 feet……..Nearby
in 136 bigger huts, Australian workers live in accommodation whilst better than the 10 feet by 9 feet huts is
still substandard.”
“Only railway employees can be tenants. The larger units, officially called chalets, are reserved for running
staff drivers, firemen, guards and conductors many of whom have come to Sydney from the country railway
centres.”
“Life in the 10 feet by 9 feet huts is primitive, because the huts when built just after the war, were intended for
single men only, the department provided only community showers, toilets and cooking huts. For the mothers
of families of small children they are pitifully crude.”
“The cooking centres consist of a galvanised iron shack with a low roof and a cement floor. In one, I saw an
open coke and coal fire, was burning under two long bars of railway track………At one end of the bars was
a camp oven, which looked as though it had not been used for months. It was the sort of cooking one would
have expected in remote fettlers’ camp, but not a big city.”
“Rent of the small huts is one pound a week, including electricity……Where a man has more than 2 children,
he is supposed to rent 2 huts at 1 pound a week each, but one official admitted that some migrants undoubtedly
have understated the number of their children in order to save the cost of an extra hut.”
“The original 10 feet by 9 feet boxes have taken on a new shape over the years as Chullora’s population had
grown from within, tenants have had added verandas, small vegetable gardens, kitchenettes, fences to keep
the children home and even car shelters.”
“ I spoke to Mrs S. Maka, whose husband is a fireman and acting engine driver. She came from Poland seven
years ago. Like all the New Australians, she had expected Australia to be an Eldorado after the harshness of
Europe……From camps in Europe, she came to Cowra and spent 2 years in a migrant camp there. She has
been five years in the 10 by 9 feet hut at Chullora. There are three small children.
The Makas have bought a block of land and have saved some money toward building a house. But as their
savings grow, the amount of money they need to start building seems to be growing ahead of them. ‘It seems
we will never have enough’.
“The Railways Department is well aware that it fathered a monster when it set up Chullora Park
Settlement……..The accommodation was regarded as purely a temporary measure, as the department had in
conjunction with the Housing Commission, a scheme for the provision of cottages for those employees and
others in the metropolitan area who were living in tents.”
Mr Anderson stated that “the department is already committed to very heavy expenditure in the maintenance
of the settlement and funds are not available for other than purely essential needs.”
Source: The above extracts describing the conditions of the camp and the plight of its ‘inmates’are taken from
an article (with the above caption) appearing in the Sydney Morning Herald on 9 April, 1957.
*On Wooden Rails
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164
*On Wooden Rails
Around the Yards
Trains need to be loaded and unloaded, and put back
together, require maintenance work, and regular checks
and inspections of their workings. These would mostly
be carried out in the major yards around the state.
Shunting wagons and carriages, to re-configurre trains
depending on their loads and cargo, car and wagon
examining to ensure that the rolling stock is roadworthy
and safe, faults would need to be reported and rectified.
Thus was the daily life in the rail yards. At one time all
major stations and junctions had their own yards to
perform these duties.
Now, with changes in the way that loads are configured
and dedicated trains rather than mixed trains, has
resulted in changes in the job and in the number of
locations where major shunting and examining are
carried out. Now the once discrete functions of shunter
and car and wagon examiners have largely been
subsumed under the unfortunately named classification
of ‘Terminal Operator’. By all accounts, many of the
past shunting operations in particular were also
‘terminal’ on too many occasions.
Mick Schmitzer is the RTBU NSW Branch Assistant
Secretary and Northern Organiser. In 1964, he joined the
railways as a 16 year old junior station assistant at
Cundle Cundle, just outside of Taree. He started
working night work at a level crossing, when the
gatekeeper knocked off at 10 pm. “ I did all nightwork
for about 18 months and got about twenty pounds per
fortnight. I lived at home and rode a pushbike about 10
miles to work. There used to be a show on the television
then called “Outer Limits’ - used to watch it and then
ride in the night in the dark for about 40 minutes, and
behind every bush you’d imagine one of those ugly
buggers – a kangaroo jumped out once and I reckon I
did the last five miles in about 5 minutes flat” 1
“I wanted to move on, so transferred to Newcastle. I
went looking for where I had to work, first to Hamilton
– they’d never heard of me, told me to go to
Broadmeadow – same story never heard of me – you’d
better go to Tyrell House – the Pie Shop – Admin in
Newcastle. They told me I should be at Broadmeadow
Yards. OK – so I went to Boadmeadow Yards as a
Number Taker (still a station assistant class 1) – he was
1 Interview with Mick Schmitzer, April 2005
2 Ibid
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
Enfield Roundhouse
the young bloke who took all the particulars down after
shunters were done, clean the wagons down, keep the
fires going.”
As with many other jobs on the railways, you had to be
over 19 years of age before you were considered
sufficiently mature and experienced to become a
shunter. “So, I became a shunter during the time of the
Vietnam War – when blokes we worked with were
conscripted, some didn’t come back. I spent the next 17
years as a wagon shunter at the one location – people
don’t believe me when I tell them– to get a promotion –
seniority – once you became a senior shunter class 2 –
jumped ahead, if you didn’t move around – you tended
to get left behind in promotion. I decided to stay put – I
had a wife and young kids and didn’t want the
disruption of being a railway gypsy.” 2
Mick describes many of the working conditions as
appalling at the time, and the dangers of shunting in a
large yard using gravitational shunting, but also that
there were aspects of the job that were enjoyable and
satisfying. “It was dangerous, but it was outdoors, it
was physical, you kept pretty fit doing that sort of job.
Not just the coupling, had to put the air hoses on – they
could also do some damage if you weren’t careful –
there was a knack to shunting with hooks – had to get in
between to couple them but not to uncouple, and so on.
Things slowly changed with more automatic couplings
and things did improve. We weren’t allowed to work any
longer than ten hours – we were out in the open all the
time. It may sound silly but I really loved shunting, I
really enjoyed it.”
*On Wooden Rails
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
Dave Morris has worked at Enfield for the past 25 years,
and remembers first going in to the yard with its 40 Up
roads, and 30 Down, and those in between, and
wondering how he would remember all of them. He
came to shunting through labouring at Lidcombe
Electric Depot, then transferred across to Traffic to do
shunting before ‘going out as a guard’. He worked at
Darling Harbour as a Porter loading wagons, before
attending shunting school. He started at Enfield yards in
1981.He abandoned the idea of becoming a guard and
settled for the more regular and predictable rostering
around shunting. 3
Enfield Yard was once the biggest in Australia, and also
relied on ‘gravitational’ shunting – releasing and
applying hand brakes and allowing the grades of the
yard to move the rolling stock – it was particularly
dangerous as the wagons and rolling stock could ‘get
away’ if they picked up too much momentum or a brake
failed. The shunter could be seriously injured or killed
working these conditions..
Jim Walshe, former ARU Branch Secretary, worked as a
station assistant at Town hall before taking on shunting
at Darling Harbour in the 1950s. He describes the work
at Darling Harbour as hard and dangerous with its
‘gravitational’ and ‘loose’ shunting movements. On
reflection he believes that the closure of Darling
Harbour yards was a ‘good thing’. It wasn’t uncommon
for wagons or carriages to ‘get away’ and end up in the
harbour. Whether working the goods trains or
166
Enfield Yard, 1930s
3 Interview with Dave Morris, May 2005
4 Interview with Jim Walshe, June 2005
5 Hearn, op.cit., p 123
6 Dave Anderson, unpublished diary Railway Daze, p 5
7 Interview with Mick Schmitzer, April 2005
performing coaching (passenger) shunting, it was
dangerous work. 4
“Down through the years shunting was recognised as a
very dangerous pursuit, and indeed the traffic award
recognises that, not only in shunting but also in guard’s
duties, by restricting the number of hours that people
can work in a shift …… and of course if you made the
wrong decision in a shunt, you could easily get killed
and many of our fatalities have occurred in the shunting
area.” 5
As a lighter aside, Dave Anderson, currently the Station
Master at Hazelbrook, fondly remembers coming across
Jim Walshe, then a guard on the job in the 1960s.
“ Another job was at Valley Heights where shunting took
up most of the day. In 1964 during my first shift alone it
was daunting when you consider the workload,
accuracy and decisions required for the eight-hour shift.
I walked up to the 46 Class to see a large Irishman, pipe
in mouth, mocking me with the words ‘Bluddy ‘ell – you
call this a shoonter? We’ll be here t’midnight!’
Jim Walshe was an imposing figure who made me feel
inadequate, especially the day when I derailed two
trucks near the fettler’s shed. Lucky the ‘fets’ were
somewhere else! But in 2001 I met Jim at a retirement
function for a Station Master. Age had shrunken him a
little. He introduced me to one of his friends and stated
‘We used to give him ‘ell, but we made a good shoonter
out of ‘im!” 6
The shunters, like other railway
occupations could be quite tribal and
rigid in their groupings, often
competitive or resentful even of other
shunters at other locations. Mick
Schmitzer and others refer to the
rivalry and ‘love/hate’ relationship
between the Broadmeadow Yard and
Port Waratah. “Shunters had their
own identity – stuck together. Don’t
really know why there was a tense
relationship with Port Waratah, we
were in the same section of the union.
We were a marshalling yard they were
a push – pull operation, and we
always called Port Waratah the ‘Old
Man’s Home’.” 7
*On Wooden Rails
A Dangerous and Unforgiving Job
There are numerous accounts of horrific shunting
injuries and fatalities. Bill Sperway was working as a
safeworking porter at Grafton in 1940 when he was
seriously injured. “I was crushed between two trucks,
two carriages actually…… So I got between the two
hooks, the two hooks came together and I was in
between, so I broke four ribs back and front and
penetrated the lung and so on. So I was off for about
three months.’ That was of course the last of my
shunting.” 8
Mick Schmitzer recalls the dangers of gravitational
shunting, working with buffers and hook couplings at
Broadmeadow. “Hook wagons were difficult to couple
together – you had to bounce the truck in front of you
off the other one with the engine and you were in the
middle of that – quite a number of fellows got badly
injured and others that got killed. Knowing what we
know now about safety and if we had the OHS
legislation that we have now, we would never have
started a shift.” 9
One now famous incident was the death of shunter
Timm Dwyer at Enfield. The following extract
describing the circumstances are from an article on
former ARU Secretary Lloyd Ross by Mark Hearn in
On 19 June 1938 Timm Stephen Dwyer, a 41 year old
shunter with the NSW Government Railways, was killed
in a workplace accident at the Enfield railway
marshalling yards in Sydney. Dwyer was found crushed
between two goods trucks.
The shunter's job was one of the railways most
dangerous, particularly in the Enfield yards - the largest
in Australia, containing over one hundred miles of track.
On a quiet Sunday, Dwyer worked along a string of 56
trucks 'through down departure into the neck'. Enfield
yard ran downhill, and a system of gravitational
shunting was used to sort the trucks and carriages into
trains of various lengths. The engine in front of the long
line of trucks was out of sight around a curve. Dwyer
was standing between two trucks when they slammed
together, leaving him pinned. An inquest found that the
coupling on one of the trucks was defective, and Dwyer
had been forced to get between the trucks to force it
loose. Dwyer's union, the Australian Railways Union,
was angry that Dwyer had been left to perform such a
8 Hearn, op.cit., p 123
9 Interview with Mick Schmitzer, op. cit
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
Coal Wharf, Darling Harbour, 1969
dangerous task unaided. 'Sunday work at Enfield is
performed by the skeleton of a normally thin staff.'
Timm Dwyer had been an active unionist. Jack
Ferguson, the ARU organiser sent by the union that
Sunday to investigate the accident, had been signed up
by Dwyer as an ARU member in 1926. In the ARU
journal Railroad Ferguson observed that for the
managers of the NSW Railways Department, Dwyer's
death was 'merely an impersonal incident.' For
Ferguson, Dwyer's work mates and above all, for
Dwyer's family, Dwyer's death was not impersonal.
Dwyer was the father of two children, and Ferguson
recorded meeting Helen Dwyer, Timm's widow, and the
children, Robert and Barbara. 'If only those responsible
could enter the homes of the bereaved!'
Ferguson described how Helen had been informed of
Timm's death with 'callous indifference.' No-one from
the NSW Railways Department officially contacted her.
A young girl, hastening with the rough speed of bad
news, came to the door of the family home that Sunday
afternoon, and told Helen that 'her son' had been
injured. Realising that the girl was referring to Timm,
Helen immediately made for the Enfield yard. As Helen
rushed to the railway station, she was told by one of
Timm's fellow workers that Timm was in hospital after a
minor accident. When she arrived at the hospital she
was finally informed that Timm had been killed instantly
in the accident, and had been dead some hours.
The death of Timm Dwyer triggered an industrial
campaign to improve the conditions in the yards,
facilitated and reported by the ARU Secretary Lyoyd
Ross.
*On Wooden Rails
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
Ross demanded that the Railways department listen to
the need for action to prevent more deaths. In the
Railroad, Ross issued a challenge: 'Who says shunters
are not men?' A challenge to both the Department and
the shunters. Ross knew that he could not singlehandedly
solve the shunter's problems, and nor could
the union: the shunters had to help themselves.
Within a week, the Department made a series of
improvements for shunters - increased staff, a shorter
working week, provision of gloves (the shunters had
been grappling with the often greasy couplings with
their bare hands) and improved lighting in the Enfield
yard. Ross told the shunters that they had not only won
those gains: 'men', he said, 'have defended their selfrespect.'
…But the gains had been won at a terrible
price: between January and July 1938 the ARU's 'red
roll' recorded thirteen workplace deaths in the NSW
Railways, four of whom were shunters. 10
Shunters were a relatively militant section of the railways
workforce, and continued to campaign for improved
conditions in the yards over the years since the tragic
death of Timm Dwyer. One such campaign was for the
removal of buffers from trains. Mick Schmitzer became
active in the union and became the Shunter Section
Representative at Broadmeadow before later becoming
the State Secretary of the Shunters. It was the time when
Jim Walshe was in Newcastle as the ARU’s Northern
Organiser. “We were involved in a lot of campaigns then
with Don McKechnie, who was the State Shunter’s
Secretary at the time. We ran a major campaign to get rid
of all the buffers because of the injuries. Even when they
introduced automatic couplings they kept the buffers on
to save the cost of removing them. We saved them the
trouble, a part of the campaign involved ‘flying gangs’
that went into the yards and cut the buffers off with oxy
gear, and just dropped them where they were. We did get
rid of them.” 11
Shunting in the Rain
In addition to the congestion in the yards and the usual
hazards of the conditions, the weather caused its own
problems in many of the yards. The additional dangers
of work in wet and slippery conditions, with no or
minimal wet weather gear,gloves or other protective
equipment was compounded by flooding in a number of
yards. Jack Sparkes was an acting examiner at Enfield in
the 1940s, and describes the problems that came with
the rain.
10 Mark Hearn, Enlarging Personality –
11 Interview with Mick Schmitzer, April 2005
12 Hearn,
13 Interview with Dave Morris, May 2005
168
Senior Shunter Paul Dalmay, Sydney Terminal, 1990
“ See that yard is gravitated. All the water would run
down the bottom of the yard to the out-going train
section and there’d be a great lake right across the
bottom of Enfield yard and when we rung up about it
they didn’t believe us. But on the high tide at Cooks
River it used to flood and it was in a shocking state, and
they used to laugh when I told them that I had to tie
sleepers up to a lamp-post to save them derailing the
trains going out.” 12
New Times in the Yard
Dave Morris estimates that in 25 years at Enfield there
have been about 25 managers, often external to the
railways and using it as ‘a stepping stone, or the one
their management career perished on’. While Dave sees
some of the changes made as necessary and some as
contributing to improved working, he is frustrated at the
more recent management approaches and strategies. He
decided to stay in shunting at Enfield because it was
‘close to home, the work was to a regular roster and the
money was reasonable’.
“The numbers of shunters has dropped dramatically
through changes such as block loading where it was
previously mixed, abuses of multi-skilling, and
combining the shunting and examining roles and
duties… The guys develop a loyalty to the job that the
company doesn’t respect. Until recently, the money was
O.K (before aggregate wages were introduced in the
Pacific National Enterprise Agreement), and you could
reasonably predict your wages and work times. With the
new work arrangements, you are all over the place and
just can’t plan your time and family and social
commitments outside of work.” 13
*On Wooden Rails
Dave believes that the company is slowly ‘bleeding off
Enfield yard, letting it run down’. “It used to be busy
with a lot of different traffic. The volume has dropped,
where you used to get for example, 10,000 tons from
Botany now there is none. They are just doing
miscellaneous contract work through there now.”
Suzanne Molattam has recently been employed at Port
Waratah as a trainee driver. At present she is working in
the yard as a Terminal Operator. Unlike some of the
conditions described in this section, there is no
gravitational or ‘out of train’ shunting at Port Waratah, it
is all done from on the train. The work combines
shunting and inspecting wagons to ensure that brakes are
working, wheels are in good condition, as well as other
workings, and to check that the trains are made up
properly. The locos are taken off the train and put in the
fuel shed, and the terminal operator may have to ride out
on the train as a second person.
The approach to training hasn’t changed a great deal
over time. Suzanne describes the preparation for the job
Enfield Yard
14 Interview with Suzanne Molattam, June 2005
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
as consisting of “two weeks classroom training, and two
weeks with a mentor. You have a handbook, and also
refer issues to more experienced operators for advice.”
The basic details are recorded in an allocated book of
dockets, usually with details of the first three and last
three wagons to verify that the train is complete, and
these details as well as any anomalies are reported. If a
problem is detected in the inspection or the checks in a
slow-speed roll-by, the train will either be recalled, or
depending on the problem, a fitter or maintenance crew
will be called in to rectify the problem.
With the new classifications and roles in the yards, some
of the conditions of the past may have improved.
Modern shunting doesn’t appear to involve the same
daily hazards as experienced by many in the past, and
certainly shunting deaths are significantly less prevalent
as a defining characteristic of the work. It remains to be
seen whether the new management practices and
approaches to the work make it any more pleasant to
work in the major yards in future.
*On Wooden Rails
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
170
THE SHUNTER
The engine bars are splashed and starr’d
They've killed a shunter in the yard.
“He never seen how he was struck
And he died sudden,” someone said
The driver coughed – ‘That flamin' truck
Came on the slant and struck him dead.’
The fireman chocked and growled ‘Hard Luck!’
As he was carried to the shed.
The engine whistles short and low
(his blood is on her ‘catcher-bars’)
We had to let his young wife know
His soul had passed beyond the stars
Where he will hear no engines blow
Nor listen for the coming cars.
She stared and stared - until he came
On four men’s shoulders, up the hill
She sobbed and laughed and called his name
And shivered when he lay so still-
She had no cruel words of blame-
She bore no one of us ill-will.
They’ve washed the rails and sprinkled sand
(Oh! Hear the mail go roaring on!)
And he was just a railway hand-
A hidden star that never shone-
And no one seems to understand-
Her heart is broken! He is gone!
The engine-bars are cold and hard-
They’ve killed a shunter in the yard.
(Will Lawson, 1898: Source "Freedom on the Wallaby" - M. Pizzer [1937])
*On Wooden Rails
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
At Play on the Trike
*On Wooden Rails
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
At Play on the Railways
Rail workers and their families ,as is the case in other
industries to a greater or lesser extent, often mixed with
rail families. The similarities in lifestyles determined by
the shifts and peculiarity of work on the railways, as
well as location and proximity, rendered this a logical
social extension.
The railways ‘family’ however, is also much more
extended than location or occupation. It is a bond that
extends to all parts of the country and amongst rail
workers around the world.
Max Harrison describes this phenomenon – as one
where you would never be lonely in a strange town if
you were a railway man. “You could go into the local
pub [most towns had a ‘Railways Hotel’], start up a
conversation, say that you were a railwayman, and
you’d be immediately accepted by other railway men as
a ‘lost brother’.” 1
The rail industry, as any other, is as much a social
phenomenon as it is strictly technical, industrial or
political. The social requirements and expectations of
workers and their families are essential to their working
lives and general well-being. A sense of belonging, of
being a part of the railway ‘family’ has been at the
centre of a rail identity. This was recognised early by the
Department and is reflected in the resources and effort
directed towards attempts to provide a range of social
and educational activities for rail workers.
Healthy Bodies, Minds and Attitudes
The Railway Institute was formally opened in 1891 to
provide education and appropriate recreational activities
for rail workers. In stating some of the grand goals of the
Institute, Sir Henry Parkes concluded his speech at the
opening with the following remarks:
“ I look to the Institute to do so much in the direction of
improving the condition of those connected with it, to
raise the character of all, and to impress the true sense
of brotherhood upon all those connected with that great
and important public service.” 2
Employers such as the Railways provided social
activities and education and training to employees and
their families for a number of main reasons, all primarily
in the self-interest of the company. These efforts also
172
Art Show, Eveleigh
indicated long-term strategies to not only develop
‘suitable’ employees, but also to provide a supply of
labour, minimise industrial unrest, and serve a wider
public relations and recruiting purpose.
Many rail workers not only received a range of technical
training through the Railways Institutes, but also their
social activities. In many locations the Institute was the
social gathering and meeting place, in lieu of publicly
provided or commercial leisure venues. They were often
the place where not only sports were organised, but
where the town dance, banquets, smoke ball or other
social events took place. They provided an opportunity
for workers to mix socially, dress up, step out and to
meet new people on a social basis. The nexus of this
relationship is not only apparent in the reports of sport
and social activity around the Institutes, but even in their
naming. For example, this desired relationship is
reflected in the Institute in Junee the Railway and Town
Institute.
The range and types of social activity organised by the
Railway Institute was extensive, and included sporting
teams and competitions in most sports (including rugby
league, cricket, swimming, gymnastics, aussie rules,
wrestling), leisure activities such as billiards, card
games, bowls, darts, flower shows, orchestras, brass
bands, choirs, theatre, dances and concerts. An example
of the extent of the activity is that by the late 1920s the
Institute had 63 tennis courts in country areas, many
built by member’s voluntary labour 3 . A similar story can
be told for billiards halls and other facilities built in
country towns.
1 Interview with Max Harrison, June 2005
2 Cited in a summary of the history of the Institute in Institute News , Summer 2005, p13
3 See Nikki Balnave, Company-sponsored recreation in Australai: 1890-1965, Labour History, November 2003, p5
*On Wooden Rails
These social and recreational activities also crossed over
into more ‘patriotic’ endeavours, such as military
reserves, aimed at not only identification with the
company but also with the nation. This patriotism could
then be called into question at times of industrial unrest
or political conflict in the industry. Greg Patmore
describes the development of the Reserve Railway Rifle
Company, established in 1888, as ‘a positive though
minor element in the development of labour control
through cultivating a general respect for authority and
fostering loyalty to management goals.’ 4 By 1914 this
activity had extended to a national Railway and
Tramway Reserve Rifle Association.
These activities were encouraged at several levels, as is
reflected in the Department’s magazine the Budget in
1913:
“We have annual interstate cricket, football and other
sporting fixtures, for which it is claimed that much good
is derived by the provision of the social element
connected with and following upon such meetings. How
much more so when members of the opposing teams
represent the patriotic element of the Railway and
Tramway staffs, and fully recognise that the experience
and skill required in friendly rivalry have really for its
ultimate objective that of the defence of our homeland.” 5
Many of the Railway Institutes around the state were
primarily social in their early activities, and it wasn’t
until after the 1917 strike in the railways and tramways
that the Department embarked on a more concerted
building program and extending the activities and
functions of the Institute. In many locations [Junee,
Werris Creek, Blayney, South Grafton and Nyngan] the
Institute purchased the School of Arts buildings and
largely subsumed their community roles. Even in the
locations where the Institute ‘competed’ with such
organisations, their role was viewed as a positive
contribution to town social life.
In Armidale, when temporary Institute premises were
replaced with a permanent building in 1922, Dr Harris,
president of the School of Arts is reported as saying “he
could see why the Railway Commissioners subsidised
such Institutions; because they were for their benefit as
well as the good of their staff and they were really more
Schools of Art than the Institutions known by that name,
which were generally only social clubs.” 6
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
Some of the uneasy tensions around the relationship
between the activity of the Institutes, the Railways and
worker disquiet are evident in the awkward speech by
the Mayor of Goulburn (formerly ‘employed at
Goulburn loco, until dismissed as a ‘lilywhite’ in the
1917 general strike) Alderman Rogers at the official
opening in 1919.
In officially welcoming the Chief Commissioner, Mr
James Fraser, the Mayor stated that he was “until
recently one of Mr Faser’s employees at Loco., one of
those unhappy fellows, but right through the course of
that unhappiness he was pleased to say that whenever
they approached the Commissioner they got a ‘fair cut’.
For that reason he was glad to have the honour and
privilege of giving Mr James Fraser a right hearty
welcome to the City of Goulburn.” 7
It has been the character, loyalty and hearts of the
railway family that employers and unions have been
competing for over most of the life of the industry. By
providing a defined and identifiable sporting team or
leisure activity, the hope is that those participating will
take pride and a sense of unity in the ‘team’, whether it
be company or union.
Welfare or
Company-sponsored recreation has been an important
part of industrial welfare for at least two main reasons –
to improve and attract labour supply and to enhance
managerial prerogative and control.
This was particularly the case from the depression and
industrial conflicts of the 1890s until the 1960s. A
concept that went out of ‘fashion’, but is being
reinvented by modern workplaces and management. The
irony is that as many ‘given’ social services and benefits
are being wound back or privatised (self-funded
retirement and superannuation, higher education fees,
means testing of a range of social security benefits), the
concept of company or union-sponsored entitlements
are having a revival of sorts. The pendulum has turned
once more, where serious consideration is being given to
‘benefits’ in preference to wage increases. These include
more emphasis on standard of life, leisure and general
facilities and amenities, whether it be extended
parenting leave, subsidised workplace meals, travel
concessions, superannutaion contributions, workplace
4Greg Patmore, A History of Industrial Relations in the NSW Government Railways, PhD Thesis, Department of Industrial
Relations, University of Sydney, 1985, p 42
5Cited in Balnave, op.cit., pp 15-16
6Reports on Opening of Armidale Railway Institute, NSW Railway Institute Archives
7Reports on Opening of Goulburn Railway Institute, NSW Railway Institute Archives
*On Wooden Rails
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health and fitness facilities. For many industries and
workers these items will be the hotly contested industrial
issues of the future. Awards and agreements are
increasingly focussing on clauses relating to work and
social relationships the notion of ‘working to live, not
living to work’, a slogan used in recent RTBU
negotiations.
Many of the recreational facilities were provided at
times and in places where these were not generally
available or accessible. Private transport and mobility
was more limited, and the opportunity for affordable
recreation and leisure activities were limited. They were
also most popular when social and welfare services were
non-existent or restricted. They pre-dated council
sporting grounds or private entertainment centres. They
were often the only social facilities in town. In many
ways the Railway Institutes were the forerunners to
modern community centres, halls and recreation
facilities.
The local community was just that, ‘local’ and defined
by geography and distance.
socialised within defined geographic areas, which in
turn were defined by walking distance, or local train and
tram services. Without mass private vehicle use, a range
of public and private recreation, without cable and
satellite bringing television and movies into our homes,
and without the advent of the private media rooms,
surround sound and home theatre – the recreation
provided was often the only social events that many
workers engaged in.
Companies and employers seldom provide noncompulsory
benefits to employees simply out of the
‘goodness of their hearts’. What is often referred to as
company ‘welfare’ usually has little do with the
‘welfare’ or well-being of employees, but more to do
with investment in human capital or resources. Many of
the schemes developed have clear business motives.
Much in the same way as with the early efforts at mass
and worker education, literacy was required in the new
industrial age in order to be obedient and loyal servants
– both to god and to capital.
When a company provides training and education for
workers, social activities and gifts – they are not usually
motivated by acts of altruism or ‘christian charity’. They
are usually quite blatant attempts to ‘educate’ workers in
the particular discourse, ways and expectations of the
employer – to be the model employees required. They
are also ‘loyalty’ programs – to ensure loyalty of
8 ARU State Secretary, Arthur Chapman, cited in Hearn, op.cit., p42
174
employees and their families toward the employer.
These are clear cut business decisions and strategies,
and were recognised as such by many unions, who
realised that they had to win back or hold on to the
hearts and minds of members, as they went about setting
up competing ‘loyalty’ programs and direct services to
members.
Therefore, as the Railway Institutes served the railways
well in educating workers in the subjects required of the
job, both technically as well as morally and ethically,
and even educating the next generation to be ‘good
employees’, the unions developed parallel programs
through their own education activities such as
Education Association (WEA), Mechanics Institutes,
and establishing their own reading libraries with
‘alternative’ reading material. Some of the activities
became enshrined in industrial conditions – such as
union training and the union picnic day.
Competing for Loyalty
These employer-sponsored schemes were often matched
by union-sponsored recreational activities In fact, the
union became concerned that management used the
sport and cultural activities of the Institute to ‘maintain
allegiance’ in railway towns:
In 1929, The ARU Secretary, Arthur Chapman outlined
the need for the union to match the company social and
recreational activities, as “the very life of the worker is
bound up with the administration. He becomes
thoroughly ‘departmentalised’ …..the union must
assume the lead in these matters, and form its own
sports organisation, bands, orchestras and holiday
camps, even its motor clubs.” 8
Union Football Team
*On Wooden Rails
Ladies Gymnasium (NSW Railway Institute)
The union’s Educational and Organising Committee
formed in 1933 launched the ARU Football Club, and
an ARU Cricket Association. The ARU sponsored its
own 28 piece band in 1934, a Womens Auxiliary was
formed to involve the ‘women folk’.
It should be noted that the Women’s Auxiliary was not
established to provide ‘tea and sympathy’ but a
complementary industrial and political support role, ‘to
participate in the struggle for working class
emancipation.’ 9 One example of the advocacy role
performed by the Women’s Auxiliary in the 1930s is
recounted by the Secretary of the Newcastle branch,
Pearl Hickey was taking up the plight of fettlers and
their families in the far west of the state.
“The women folk, as regards shelter, a lot of them lived
in tents, and they lived a long way from shopping …
there was no … extra pay for climatic work. We
campaigned for that sort of thing.” 10 Many of the
campaigns were successful in gaining improved
conditions and allowances across the industry.
The unions also set up their own union library and
reading rooms with ‘alternative’ reading material,
published pamphlets, journals and newsletters, and
organised lectures and sponsored drama groups.
Evening classes were held at many depots
The ARU drama groups were particularly popular in
Newcastle. Tom Hickey was the principal organiser of
ARU plays in Newcastle, along with
Tutor, Lloyd Ross. One of the plays organised was a
dramatisation of John Reed’s celebration of the
Boshevik revolution Russia, ‘Ten days that Shook the
World’, slightly different subject matter than that
provided by the Institute.
Lloyd Ross, then WEA tutor and later to become ARU
State Secretary, also organised a pageant in 1933, titled
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
‘Labor’s Cavalcade’ which was a sequence of choruses
and dramatised scenes drawn from five centuries of
working class history. At this stage Ross claimed that he
could better serve the educational interests of workers
better through the
as a direct member of the labour movement. 11
It must also be remembered that the Railway Institutes
or the rail unions were not the sole sources or providers
of social services to rail workers and their families. They
existed in a broader context of working people and local
communities would formally or informally organise
appropriate recreational activity. They competed for the
leisure time of workers in a period of high demand.
These developments occurred in the climate of limited
social opportunity and choice, and in an era when social
clubs, local sports, amateur theatre, associations formed
around all manner of common interest. Suit clubs were
social as well as a practical means of loco drivers
acquiring a quality suit. The garden clubs would allow
workers to show off their acumen or green thumbs in
their small garden plots – to share their home-based
leisure activities or hobbies in the workplace.
Railway Picnics
Railway picnics and similar activities [in particular brass
bands] have traditionally been labour movement rituals
and cultural expressions, and intrusions into these areas
by companies were mostly not welcome. Many of these
areas of ‘recreational’ activity were areas of contested
loyalty, where unions and company would compete for
patronage. In the railways, the Department was expected
to contribute to these events through recognition of a
declared holiday, provision of special trains and other
resources, but it was never ‘their’ picnic – it belonged to
rail workers and their families. This is further reflected
in the place union picnic days have held in awards and
agreements over time.
Tom Owens (who joined his brother and father on the
railways in 1927 as a junior porter) recalls the picnic
“[The annual railway picnics] were a beauty. You see
they were something that you looked forward to, we used
to go on a special train everywhere, we used to go to
Quirindi and Muswellbrook and Tamworth. That was a
big show. The annual; picnic, everyone went …. A real
social event. Used to supply the kids with all the things
they wanted.” 12
9 Railroad, 1931
10 Interview with Pearl Hickey, in Hearn, op.cit., p45
11 Darryl Dymock, A Special and Distinctive Role in Adult Education: WEA Sydney 1953-2000, Allen & Unwin, Sydney 2001, pp 15-16
12 Tom Owens, cited in Hearn, op.cit., p 60
*On Wooden Rails
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These were opportunities for inexpensive family
outings, where the whole family could board a special
picnic train and be delivered to the location and spend
the day playing, competing, eating drinking and
receiving gifts. The family picnic days were held in all
major locations, with hundreds and at times more than a
thousand people attending the local picnic day.
Former union organiser Ken Sullivan, who started work
as a junior porter at Narranderra in 1958, describes the
railway picnic as a huge annual social event. “The
railway picnic was held at Narranderra – trains would
come from every where, they’d come from Hillstone,
Hay, Tocumwal, Junee and all over….It was a really big
event, and we used to also have Highland Dance
competition in the middle of it. There were money prizes
for races for kids and adults, plenty to eat – ice cream.
400 or 500 people would come streaming down from the
railway station – kids were allowed off school to go to
the railway picnic.” 13
There are still local christmas parties and picnics held in
most regions of the state, even though they are waning
as the popular events they once were, and are gradually
being removed from industrial agreements as dedicated
holidays.
176
Australian Railways Union Band (Hood Collection, State Library of NSW)
13 Interview with Ken Sullivan, March 2005
Union Holiday Park
The ARU purchased a holiday park at Sussex Inlet on
NSW South Coast in 1948 to provide holiday amenities
for union members and their families. This was the first
trade union holiday camp in Australia. Initially the
holiday park was targeted at country members , enabling
them to take their families on an inexpensive seaside
holiday, it extended to a popular holiday destination for
members from all over the state.
Later re-named New Generation Holiday Park, it is still
run as a profitable commercial venture by the RTBU,
and in recent years has been significantly renovated and
upgraded. The holiday park has a full-time manager, and
requires ballots of members for places over the main
holiday periods.
The popularity of many of the company and unionsponsored
sporting and social activities went into
decline by the 1950s. The initial enthusiasm of the late
nineteenth century, when there was high industrial
unrest, economic depression and limited recreational
options had passed. Similarly, the disruptions of the
major wars and depression of the last century, coupled
with limited mobility and geographic restrictions, as
well as the need to attract and hold ‘suitable’ workers,
*On Wooden Rails
and to dampen industrial
militancy as motives for a range
of social activities were losing
their appeal and could not be
sustained.
With urban developments,
suburbs being spread further, the
advent and common ownership of
private motor vehicles, and the
increase in a variety of public and
private social, sporting and leisure
opportunities, the public social
activities of the railways went into
decline.
leisure activities independent of
the company. While some of these
activities remain in limited guises,
the major social events – the huge picnic crowds and
special trains, the large dances and railway balls no
longer exist as the social centre of the local town.
The much diminished Railway Institute still organises
sporting teams and competitions , trophies – including
touch football. For example, in 2004 12 teams competed
for the 3 Divisions. The Macquarie Hotel Team won first
Division (and the Railway Institute Shield over the Late
Night Vomits). In second division the Bob Yohnick
Shield was taken out by the Illawarra South Electric over
the Bundy bears. The PacNat Sidesteppers won the over
40s competition.
Rifle clubs still exists through affiliation with the NSW
Rifle Association, and the Railway Institute still fields
teams in interstate competition such as the Triggs
Shield.The Institute is also involved in organising local
picnic days and christmas parties in the industry 14
ARU Cricket Team
14 Institute News, Summer 2005
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
First Interstate Tennis Team
The Rail Tram and Bus Union also continues to provide
a range of ‘social’ or ‘loyalty’ services for its members,
often in collaboration with commercial providers. These
include a range of financial and legal services,
partnership programs such as the RTBU/Melbourne
Credit Union Visa Card, income protection schemes,
and member discounts on a range of consumer items.
The areas of social, recreational and educational activity
remain industrial battle zones where employers, for
example, attempt to veto, restrict or deny union training
and access to union information. Union picnic days are
denounced as employee rorts and so on. However, as
union and worker focus shifts increasingly away from
strict wage claims to more ‘lifestyle’ or quality of life
issues, this contest is likely to see a revival and a new
intensity. Similarly, as employers increase medical
requirements and formal qualifications for their
employees, then it is reasonable to expect responses that
make claims on employers to provide health and fitness
facilities, child care, and access to a range of education
and training.
Nostalgia would sometimes demand the return of some
of these social activities, to relive the ‘good old days’.
Modern circumstance and conditions would show this to
be impractical and largely undesired. Nonetheless, it is
worth pondering whether more contemporary forms of
this type of collective social activity, the play of
solidarity, the identification with the railway ‘tribe’ or
‘family’ are not worthy of consideration in the face of
breakdowns of support and social networks across the
industry.
*On Wooden Rails
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
Learning to be a Good Rail
In addition to the attempts to provide a range of social
and leisure activities for workers and their families, a
‘proper’ education has remained a strong focus of rail
employers. The desire to control the minds, bodies and
souls of workers continues to be an ideal of even modern
management.
The role of education and training, as well as
propaganda tools such as in-house magazines,
newsletters and journals, and more recently web pages,
have been significant in the contest over the loyalty, cooperation
and compliance of the workforce.
From the establishment of the Railway Institute in the
late 1880s, to regional and site-based industry training
centres to the State Rail Training College, and through
more informal education programs, the railways have
always been preoccupied with shaping and moulding the
workforce to a desired shape.
The NSW Railway and Tramway Institute, for example,
offered (for five shillings per annum) employees’ sons
(not less than 14 years of age) the opportunity to attend
classes offered by this institution, other than those in
purely departmental subjects, on payment of the above
subscription fees. It also offered free travel passes to
junior employees, and half-fares to seniors and sons of
employees, to attend the classes. The Institute officially
opened in 1891, focussed on libraries and technical, and
non-technical classes, as well as social and recreational
activities of railway workers. 1
As Nikki Balnave points out, the list of classes
conducted by the Institute was broad. During the 1898
session, classes were held in Advanced Shorthand,
Elementary Shorthand, Goods & Coaching Accounts,
Typewriting, Telegraphy, Mechanical Drawing, Safe
Railway
had extended to also include Applied Mathematics,
Arithmetic, Boiler Construction, Car Construction,
Bookkeeping, Electrical Car Driving, Electricity
(Elementary), Electricity (Advanced), English, Spelling
and Composition, Locomotive Engine Driving, Plate
Laying, Sign Writing, Car Decoration, Steam, and
Westinghouse Brake. 2
At the Annual Meeting of the Institute in January 1913,
it was announced that there were upwards of 60 classes
178
Old Railway Institute Building,
Devonshire Street, Sydney
with nearly as many teachers, and by the support of the
Chief Commissioner, the teachers were paid for their
services. Non-technical education was also provided by
the Railway Institute. For example, lectures were
provided on a variety of topics such as ‘Matching and
Mating’, ‘My Trip through Europe’, ‘Diamond Jubilee
Celebrations’, ‘The Rocks Around Us’. 3 It is probably
best that we only speculate about the content and motive
of the ‘Matching and Mating’ training! The Railway
Institute also had fully-fitted out carriages as Instruction
Cars that would travel and be used for classes at
locations all over the state.
Companies such as the Railways provided education and
training to employees and their families for a number of
main reasons, all primarily in the self-interest of the
company. As mentioned in the previous section relating
to company-sponsored social activities, these efforts
also indicated long-term strategies to not only develop
‘suitable’ employees, but also to provide a supply of
labour, minimise industrial unrest, and serve a wider
public relations and recruiting purpose.
The focus by the Railway Institute on educating sons
and daughters of rail workers, 14 years and older, was
aimed at securing a future source of compliant labour,
particularly in country areas, and attempting to secure
the good will and loyalty of the workers and their
communities.
1Institute News, Summer 2005
2Reported in issues of the Budget between 1899 and 1915, Cited in Balnave, unpublished PhD thesis, Industrial Welfarism in
Australia 1890-1965, University of Sydney 2002, p157
3Ibid
*On Wooden Rails
On the opening of a new wing of the Institute building,
the NSW Premier, G.H. Reid declared that “we have
men who have grown up with sufficient intelligence,
having the opportunity of guidance from such hands,
that we are placed in the position that we have no need
to go elsewhere for a man for any position in the
service”. 4
The emphasis on technical education was directly to
meet the current and future requirements and changes in
the industry. However, non-technical education was also
viewed as important in the overall development of the
‘character and morality’ of the workforce. Thus,
personal development was seen to be a combination of
technical skills as well as personal growth to provide a
well-rounded and productive workforce. The classes,
recreational activities and libraries of the Railway
Institute also served a broader social purpose of luring
young workers away from the evils of the saloon and
other temptations that may be found in wandering the
streets. This sobriety and ‘good living’ was considered
essential to, and synonymous with being a ‘good
worker’. The railways had strict rules about no drinking
or smoking on the job, and this extended to taking a dim
view of drinking out of hours.
In praising the work of the Institute, the Premier, the
Right Hon Reid stated “I think that great as is the
natural tendency of people in this colony to enjoy
themselves we should always endeavour to find some
time for the development of our heaven-born faculties,
and I hope that the young men will endeavour to devote
their leisure time to cultivate their faculties so as to
become not only fit to take their places in the highest
branches of their profession, but also to develop them in
such a way as to be able to rise to the top of the tree”. 5
Inside Westinghouse Air Brake Instruction Car
(NSW Railway Institute)
4Budget, 20 March 1899
5Ibid 6Balnave, op.cit. pp180-181
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Commissioner Fehon echoed these sentiments at the
Institute annual Meeting in 1899, when he remarked that
he was ‘particularly pleased to find the younger
members of the service coming forwards year after year
to take prizes for work performed. This was the more
gratifying because the youths of the Australian colonies
were inclined to run wild instead of studying and fitting
themselves for higher positions in life. There was a large
amount of chaff among the young people of Australia,
but among those present, he was pleased to say, they
could find the wheat’.
Despite all the high hopes and praise for the education
offered by the Railway Institute, it wasn’t until many of
the courses offered were directly linked to qualifications
required for promotion and advancement in the service,
that they were taken up in significant numbers. For all
the early fanfare, the numbers of rail employees making
up the membership of the Institute was only 7 % in
1912, and as low as 5.7% in 1914, and increasing to
approximately 13% by the end of the war in 1918.
The educational importance of the Institute was elevated
by the steady introduction of the use of Institute
certificates in promotion and staff reviews for seniority.
From 1920 onwards, the Institute also had responsibility
for examining subjects such as safe-working and railway
accounts. Not surprisingly, given these enhanced roles in
the direct employment, promotion and advancement, the
membership of the Railway Institute increased
dramatically to about 48 % of the workforce in 1929. 6
Libraries
Libraries were central to the educational efforts of the
Railway Institute. The NSW Railway Institute library
opened in 1891 with a stock of around 7,000 volumes,
but by December 1921, the total number of books had
reached around 100,000. The books were selected with
‘due regard’ to the tastes of the members who were
encouraged to make suggestions on purchases, with
special consideration given to ‘ the mechanical arts and
sciences as applied to railways and tramways and their
working’. The reading rooms also contained a large
number of the magazines and newspapers of the world,
including major newspapers from the Empire and
America. For members in country areas where branches
of the Institute did not exist, books were sent free of
charge from the library.
*On Wooden Rails
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
Libraries provided a number of opportunities. They
firstly provided a comfortable and relaxed space for
employees to engage. They also provided a more
intimate space for the employer to influence workers,
and to raise issues in a non-confrontational manner.
The Railway Institute Council Chairman, E.B Taylor, in
1913 summarised these sentiments:
“It is necessary that a man, unless he intended to be a
mere vegetable, should be a reading man, in order that
he might learn something of the history of mankind,
something of the history of our institutions, and
something of the struggle which brought these
institutions into existence, so that he might gauge and
appreciate the conditions of the present day. In the
library they provided that food…… A man’s first aim
should be to make himself efficient in his calling – to be
at the top of his class, and ready and capable of
accepting any other position which might be for his
betterment”. 7
Thus, one of the main objectives of the libraries was to
provide appropriate reading material to allow workers to
see the virtue of the railways, and to be respectful and
thankful of the authority within the service and in the
broader community – that is, to generally become ‘good
citizens’.
180
Railway Institute Electrical Class
7 Ibid., p165
Journals and Magazines
The role of journals and magazines in assisting the
educational and propaganda roles on the railways have
always been, and continue to be viewed as essential
communications with the workforce. The contemporary,
folksy, congratulatory magazines issued throughout the
industry today reflect the tradition of this form of
‘intimate’ and selective communication medium.
The Railway Institute launched the New South Wales
Railway Budget in September 1892, which was
published continuously until 1930, and was eventually
replaced by the Staff, which commenced in 1924 and
later incorporated the various publications and
newsletters of the Railway. These publications always
explicitly appealed to personal betterment and
improvement on the job and inculcating the values
required of staff.
The journals would report results of working and point
to areas for improvement, point out to workers the many
avenues for advancement within the industry and
provide light-hearted and biographical examples of
‘model’ rail workers. They were an effective way of
getting the company message out and reinforcing the
values and expectation of the Railways and Tramways.
*On Wooden Rails
Fighting for Minds and Hearts
There is no doubt that one of the objectives of the
Railway Institute, in addition to developing the technical
and social skills required of employees, was also a
‘political’ education. It was seen as a means of
minimising worker militancy and radicalism, especially
at times such as the first world war, with the influence of
the IWW and socialists, and later when communists
were more actively involved in the industry and union
activity.
In 1916, Assistant Commissioner Milne stated that the
Institute’s educational facilities would equip workers
“mentally to form opinion on the great industrial and
social problems of the day with consequent ability to
analyse and refute any of the pernicious influences
which strove to sway them from the path of duty”. 8
The unions, while providing lukewarm support to the
Institute and some of the services it provided, were
suspicious at the motives, and wary of the loyalty that
may be generated. They were concerned that the
strategies of the employer through the educational,
social and library services may be successful in drawing
support away from labour and industrial matters towards
a anti-union complicity.
The unions were not prepared to let these activities go
unchecked, and felt the need to make their own efforts at
‘loyalty’ and propaganda programs, to ensure the
solidarity and ongoing support of members
Union Education & Training
As was mentioned in the previous section, the unions set
up their own libraries and reading rooms, produced their
own journals and publications, and conducted their own
educational activities for their members. The classes
offered through the Institute also took on industrial
significance, as failure could result in lost promotional
opportunities , demotion or dismissal from the service.
Patmore claims that the discontent and criticisms of the
Institute had lead both the NSW Branch of the ARU and
the AFULE members to call for a boycott of the
Institute. 9
The ARU had formed its own Education and Training
Committee in the 1930s, aimed at combating the
influence and allegiances generated by the Railway
Institute, and to encourage members to be active
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
unionists. This educational and organising role was
viewed not only as a foil to the employer’s efforts, but as
a more important plank in the objective of ultimately
bringing about socialism, as a ‘prelude to taking control
of the social and economic machinery and operating it
in the interests of the workers.’ 10
The importance of worker education, beyond employer
control, was also reflected in the establishment of labour
movement education and training programs through
initiatives of the Labor Council of NSW, the ACTU and
the establishment of the Trade Union Training Authority.
Unions were also actively involved in establishing,
influencing and monitoring organisations such as the
adult education initiatives.
The
New South Wales in 1913 at a specially convened
committee of the Labor Council of NSW. Among the 28
organisations responsible for facilitating this
development were the Australian Railway
Union and the Tramway Employees Union. One of the
main objectives of the new association was:
“the ideal of building up an organisation which should
be a factor in the educational life of New South Wales,
an organisation which would be truly representative of
working-class opinion on educational questions –
capable of taking an active part in the moulding of our
educational system in accordance with democratic
ideals and aspirations.” 11
Telegraphy Class
8Balnave, op.cit., p 164
9Greg Patmore, op.cit., pp396-397
10See Hearn, op.cit., p43
11First Annual Report of the WEA, cited in Darryl Dymock, A Special and Distinctive Role in Adult Education: WEA Sydney
1953-2000, Allen & Unwin, Sydney 2001
*On Wooden Rails
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Some of the WEA’s main supporters later became
disenchanted as they saw it moving away from these
ideals. Lloyd Ross, who was then a tutor in WEA in
Newcastle, and the editor of its journal ‘The Australian
Highway’, complained that it was becoming too ‘timid’
and was moving away from the ‘social towards the
individual’. He claimed that the WEA had become ‘not
a working class but an adult education movement, with
numbers as the only criterion of success and failure’. 12
Over its history, different unions have removed their
support then reaffiliated with the WEA over concerns of
direction and content.
The WEA continued to provide a wide range of popular
adult education programs, including many focusing on
labour movement issues and topics. It also remained
active as an alternative to many of the non-technical
classes run by the Railway Institute. It is also worth
noting that in the period when the Railway Institute was
declining, the WEA enrolments grew from under 5,000
in 1948 to approximately 20,000 in 1999. In keeping at
least with its original ‘liberal’ ideals the WEA still
attracts more than one third of its enrolments in
humanities and social sciences subjects. 13
The importance of education and training, both
internally for union members, as well as inconsistent
external developments in the industry, through
traineeships and other recognised and accredited
vocational qualifications, has become increasingly
important in recent times.
The NSW Branch of the RTBU had previously been
involved in a range of delegate training, internally and
through TUTA, but in 2000 employed a dedicated
education and research officer to develop a more
182
Loco Engine Driving Class
12 Lloyd Ross cited in Dymock, ibid., pp15-17
13 See Darryl Dymock, op.cit
14 NSW Branch Report to RTBU National Council, 2003, p 52
15 Interview with Linda Carruthers, April 2005
strategic and systematic approach that was more central
to the overall Branch planning and organising. Some of
the activities were summarised in reports to the 5th
National Council in November 2003. The report
provides details of training activities conducted across
different work areas in the preceding years, as a part of
the union’s overall organising strategy.
The Branch Report states “the role of education and
training in the organising plans is set out in the Branch
training policy adopted by Branch Council in 2002. The
policy is directed to ensuring that education and
training is undertaken in a way that supports the
organising activity identified in each area, and refers to
mutual accountabilities and responsibilities at all levels
to ensure that the Branch training effort is focussed on
achieving the goals set by the Branch”. 14
The Education and Research Officer for the NSW
Branch of the RTBU, Linda Carruthers, was invited to
come to the Branch from the union’s National Office to
assist in the implementation of strategies aimed at
achieving the objectives described above. Linda
summarises the new focus of the union’s education and
training as one towards an organising and movementbased
model.
“By providing education and training of activists and
delegates and a developmental role for union officers,
we are trying to change the way that the branch does its
work. It builds the union by building the capacity and
the activities of members, delegates and activists –
moving away from an ‘insurance company’ idea or
model where you pay your money, pick up the phone
with a problem ,and they fix it - towards a movement
based model of the union as a collection of active people
campaigning and working together to bring about
results in the workplace and the broader community by
collective action.” 15
As disputes continue between unions and employers
over the contested ground of rail workers education and
training, the two continue to compete for the hearts and
minds of the workforce. Both are acutely aware of this
contest in the current industrial climate. Employers are
intent on controlling the training and education content,
and restricting or denying access to union training.
Unions, on the other hand, see much of the education
and training as essential to maintaining and developing
union activism and organising in the workplace, and
crucial to the viability and future roles of the union.
*On Wooden Rails
Safeworking Instruction Car
Shorthamd class
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
ARU Women's Bowls Team, 1991
Mechanical Drawing Class
Arithmetic Class
Railway Institute Reading Room
*On Wooden Rails
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
184
Stephen Doyle, Bogie Maintenance
Centre Chullora
Early Electric Train and
*On Wooden Rails
Rodrigo Adriano, Central 1992
XPT Train Crew
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
Guards, Central
Welcoming the XPT
Enjoying a cuppa
Dan Elkoudousi, Guard
Sydney, 1992
Pay Bus, Parkes
Haslem's Creek
*On Wooden Rails
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of
186
Certificate issued to rail workers after the Sydney Olympics 2000
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