Canberra Railway Museum

Last Tuesday I got the opportunity to visit the Canberra Rail Museum. It was a quiet day, with a few guys working on some of the rolling stock, and I was fortunate enough to be given an escorted tour of their site. Here are some of the photos that I took.

The building on the platform is the visitors' centre, which is entered from the opposite side. There are normally a couple of coaches sitting at the platform, but they had been used for tourist rides over the Easter weekend and had not yet been returned to their usual resting place.

There were several locomotives and coaches sitting in a long shed opposite the platform, including "4403", a preserved NSW 44 class locomotive:

A couple of guys were working between two coaches sitting behind 4403, preparing to move one of them back to the platform.  One of them asked whether I'd like to ride in the cab while they performed the shunting. Would I??? Hell, yeah!!

Here's my driver at the controls:

Here's a short video I made:

Before leaving 4403 I took this photo of the engine.

It was actually very dark in there, and I could see almost nothing when I took the photo. I just pointed the camera and released the shutter.

Back on the ground again, I continued my tour. Sitting at the end of the shed, in a spot that made photographing it quite difficult, was Beyer-Garratt 6029 (billed as "the largest operating locomotive in the southern hemisphere.")

A little further down in the yard I found a couple of old steam engines. These photos are of 3016 (NSW C30T class), which has been beautifully restored to working condition:

There is more information about engine 3016 here.

This is engine 1210, a NSW Z12 class loco, which is being restored. It pulled the first train to arrive at Canberra:

More information on 1210 is available here.

Not far from the steam engines was a pair of (former VR) S class locos. The rear-most unit is S300 which entered service in 1957, and it's still struttin' its stuff.  S311 entered service in 1960.

These next photos are of engine 4807, a NSW 48 class diesel. The 48 class commenced service in 1959.

The museum has very recently received this NSW 86 class locomotive from Junee for restoration. It appears to have been left where vandals had easy access to it. The inside is just as messy as the outside.

The museum also has other locos (some in various stages of disrepair) as well as a large number of passenger cars of all ages (including cars from the Spirit of Progress.) But by now time was running short, so I had to end my visit without taking a closer look at those.

As usual, thanks for looking. 

Ron