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Off the rails at Woodville Junction: a vintage photo essay on a railway mishap

As a newspaper reporter, I often had the experience of spending time covering a story, only to have it never appear in print or, even worse perhaps, see it cut to a brief on a page deep inside the next day's edition. Even though I disliked this, I had to admit that our staff photographers suffered the problem to a far greater degree than most reporters. The photographers would be sent racing at a moment's notice to some event that seemed to hold promise for the news pages, returning later with a comprehensive set of shots…

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Read more about the article Bridging the Hawkesbury River: Part 2
The "old" and "new" Hawkesbury River railway bridges. The new bridge is on the right in the photo.

Bridging the Hawkesbury River: Part 2

By 1937 it had become apparent that the first bridge over the Hawkesbury River, NSW – a key link in the rail connection between the state capital Sydney and the north of the state – was badly in need of replacement. Cracks had appeared in at least one of the piers supporting the bridge and emergency steelwork was clamped around pier number 4 to prevent it failing. Investigations of the other piers found the concrete wasn’t suitable for the loads the bridge was expected to support. Meanwhile, it was also found that the bearings supporting the…

Continue ReadingBridging the Hawkesbury River: Part 2

Bridging the Hawkesbury River: Part 1

When the first railway bridge over the Hawkesbury River was opened on May 1, 1889, it completed the final link in a rail system that linked NSW with South Australia, Victoria and Queensland - albeit not with uniform gauges. Official souvenir brochure to mark the opening of the first Hawkesbury River railway bridge. The rail line that linked Homebush (now known as Strathfield) with Waratah had been one of the toughest pieces of railway engineering yet tackled in the Australian colonies (Australia as a nation had not yet materialised). With river crossings to make and tunnels…

Continue ReadingBridging the Hawkesbury River: Part 1
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