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Colonial and Latin American Narrow Gauge Railway
Special Interest Group |
The following notes outline what actually happened in the region. I've attempted to make my "made-up" history as plausable as possible. The following notes show how close my "could have been" was to reality. 1. Communications in West Gippsland were always difficult. The Koo-Wee-Rup swamp blocked land travel to Melbourne until the Great Southern Railway was built. Even then, in the 1920's roads turned into quagmires in winter, limiting road travel. Prior to the coming of the railway, most transport to Melbourne was by boat. 2. Coal was first mined in the region in the 1870's, when a mine was opened at Kilcunda on the coast. A private railway was constructed from Kilcunda to the present site of San Remo to transport the coal to a safe harbour. Later in the 1890's coal mines opened in the Mt Misery area, served by a broad gauge branch line from Kurumburra. I can't find dates, but this line appears to have closed by the First World War (at least I'm assuming it did for my purposes!). The Wonthaggi coal mines were established by the State government in 1911, and lasted till the mid 1960's. A private mine did operate in the Wonthaggi area in the 1920's. 3. A number of timber mills were established from the 1870's on the coastal fringe of Western Port Bay, and later deeper in the hills. Tram lines laced through the hills to bring logs to the mills. Most seemed to have used horse power, I cannot find any record of locomotives. Large scale logging declined by the 1890's as settlers cleared land for farming. Despite popular conceptions, 19th and early 20th Century logging was very selective, and left most of the forest intact. It is the clearing of land for farming that destroyed the forests. Logging continued on a lesser scale throughout the first half of the 20th Century, and there are records of mills set up to supply pit timbers to the mines. 4. Sugar beets were never grown in the region. However potatoes, another root crop requiring similar conditions, have always been a sucessful crop. Dairying was and remains an important industry. 5. The route of the C&BFT, at least between the coast and Blackwood Forest, in large part follows an actual grade of one of the timber tramways. It was exploring the cuttings of the tramway on my family's holiday farm 25 years ago that led to me formulating the idea of the C&BFT. 6. Railways came rather late to this corner of the world. A 2'6" gauge government railway was considered in the 1890's, however was rejected as it was considered the Bass Valley was suitable for broad gauge railway construction. The broad gauge was not constructed till 1911, to serve the newly developed State coal mines. It lasted till the mid-1970's. 7. The steel industry didn't arrive in the Western Port region till the mid 1960's, when BHP constructed it's sheet metal plant at Hastings. However the First World War period was a period of major investment by BHP in the steel industry, buying up existing businesses, and building new plant. I'm just assuming they arrived at Hastings 50 years before they did! |