Next Thumbnails Galleries Home  Tarago Ore Train

The Tarago ore train had a rather unremarked life, going about its business of shifting the ores of the Woodlawn mine near Tarago to the smelters at Newcastle, pretty much ignored by most enthusiasts. It normally ran about three times a week and an afternoon off work in 1989 saw me at Tarago watching the loading and then following it up the line to Goulburn. A steady procession of trucks would shuttle between the mine and the loading shed at Tarago for discharging into the waiting wagons. The railways lost the traffic to competing road transport around late 1993, but chronic unreliability saw the contract go back to rail from late 1994. Now though, what remains of the whole operation stays silent except for the wind and the birds, the mine ceasing operations in 1998, and with it the need for transport. As a postscript, the line and the mine now see more activity but this time in reverse: the mine is used to take Sydney's garbage with a regular train providing the transport.