Australian Railway History, April 2004, p 142.

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John Knowles writes with corrections of errors, and comments on significant omissions, in this article.

The cover to the issue containing this article by Rod Milne refers to the Southport Branch.

There was no such branch, and as far as I can see, the author did not call the line from Ernest Junction to Southport a branch. He said Southport was the main terminus (of the South Coast Line). By its title, the article was about the station. The definition of the line into Southport as a branch was presumably made by the editor.

In many QR documents, the line from South Brisbane to both Southport and Tweed Heads was referred to as the South Coast Line (SCL). These include the listing of facilities at stations in the Supplement to the General Appendix, and the headings to the timetables in the Working and Public Timetables and to instructions in the former.

In other documents and circumstances, there was reference to a branch, but it was always to the Tweed Heads branch, leaving the line to Southport as the main SCL. These included the traffic returns in the Commissioner's Annual Report, and individual instructions in the Working Timetable, referring to stations along the Tweed Heads line, traffic to and from it, and working of trains to, from and along it.

On pp 142 and 148, Rod Milne decries the closure of the line to Southport. While most railway enthusiasts of the day will probably agree with his personal view, his comments are not history. He offers no facts about or analysis of the closure whatsoever. The problem with the SCL is that there were so few passengers for the service offered (in those years, there were no picnic trains - see below), and the goods traffic was so short distance and cost so much to operate.

What he says about the closure is at least incomplete. The government of the time considered the line was not carrying a great deal of traffic and was losing a lot of money. It is possible to dispute the way they arrived at the actual amount of the loss, but it cannot be denied that the loss was considerable. Further, despite operation of the majority of the passenger services at the end by 2000 class railcars, and the introduction of services to allow rail travel to Brisbane and return for work (something not mentioned by Rod Milne), travel on the line remained sparse and continued to fall. Rod Milne makes much (p 142) of the location of Southport station in the centre of that town. While the line ran to the centre of Southport, most of the development on the Gold Coast was occurring to the south of there, in places where the railway did not go. Passengers to those places had to change to a bus to reach them.

The bulk cement traffic was mostly associated with the construction of the Little Nerang Dam, which was completed about the time the line closed. The cement was transferred to road for delivery to the dam site. The mineral concentrate (from mining beach sands) was not necessarily everlasting, and the closure decision could well have allowed for the prospective life of the traffic. It was road hauled into Southport, moved 49½ miles by rail to Wooloongabba, then road hauled away from there. It is possible that the more of this traffic carried, the greater the loss, especially as special rates were quoted for these traffics.

The traffic at Southport summarised from Annual Reports of the Commissioner for Railways (numbers of passengers and tons of goods and livestock) was:

The passengers out in 1962-63 averaged 120 per day, every day of the year, three road coach loads. The road coaches already operating to the Gold Coast (and from depots adjacent to South Brisbane station) continued through Southport to the Gold Coast proper. With road improvements, some even avoided Southport. Even in 1951-52, the passenger traffic had been only 162 per day. The goods traffic in 1962-63 was about 150 tons per weekday each way, about seven loads of semi-trailer road vehicles of the day each way, and some of it was (as above) coming to an end. Of course the passenger traffic was peaked, but that emphasises how low it was on the majority of days, how equipment and crews had to be available to cater for short lived peaks.

Further, even higher tonnages of goods had been transferred from rail to road earlier as part of government policy. Until only a few years earlier, much greater tonnages in total of raw sugar than these tonnages into and out of Southport were railed from sugar mills in the Maryborough, Isis and Bundaberg districts to the old river port of Bundaberg and the seaport of Urangan. Much of it was short haul, although the distances to Urangan from Gin Gin Mill (at Wallaville) and Isis Mill were both longer than Brisbane to Southport. From about 1958 this traffic progressively went over to road transport to the new Bundaberg Port. The change of destination was accompanied by a change from movement in bags to movement in bulk. The sugar industry much preferred the new arrangement, and there was no chaos on nor destruction of the roads (see John Kerr, "Southern Sugar Saga", and QR Annual Reports).

Considerable goods traffic for the Gold Coast from Brisbane was consigned by road to Tweed Heads in NSW and transported back over the border (border hopping), to benefit from freedom of Interstate trade provisions of the Constitution and therefore from avoiding Queensland charges on road transport in competition with rail. It is possible that mineral concentrate from northern NSW for Brisbane moved by road throughout after the Tweed Heads branch closed.

No doubt in view of the lack of success in attracting traffic to and from what was even then a booming area, the heavy losses from carrying passengers, the perceived need to build roads to serve the area in any case, and the impossibility of protecting the line from border hopping at reasonable cost, the government chose not to improve the alignment of the existing line nor to extend it to the developing areas, but to close it. Even if it had chosen then to extend the line to the developing areas on the coast between Southport and Burleigh, those not served by the former Tweed Heads line, and closer to the coast than the line extended to Robina in 1998, it is unlikely that the terminus in the centre of Southport (the station which is Rod Milne's subject) with the end of rails only metres from the foreshore, would have survived. A new line would have gone to the west of the then built up area of Southport, with a station for Southport on its then western edge (compare what has been done in recent decades taking stations away from the centre of Maryborough, Mackay and Bowen).

While the local railwaymen themselves, railway and some other unions, and the opposition in parliament, protested against the closure, the closure of the line was scarcely opposed in the area served. The local members of State parliament were both of the then government parties and opposed the closure, one strongly, but both were returned at the next election. Freight consignors and consignees, and customers of their businesses, gained, because the laws and charges designed to protect the railway from road competition disappeared on its closure. Passengers paid more, however, on the road coaches - the rail fares were very cheap.

An historian giving the full story would at least have looked at the questions and the debate in parliament and quoted from what was said (see Queensland Parliamentary Debates 1963-64 session, for questions about the closure and the Motion for Adjournment to debate it.) The closure was not mentioned in parliament in the following 1964-65 session.

The old line was indeed closed by political decision, to save the cost of the losses to the taxpayer. The new line has been built as the result of another political decision, on the basis that the cost of building it and meeting its losses should be met by taxpayers throughout the State. The new line would not have come about without such political decision - no entrepreneur would have built it. Politicians have decided to continue many heavily loss-making services and parts of the QR. Not every political decision can be expected to be in favour of loss making railways, existing or potential.

No one forecast in 1964 that the population of Gold Coast would increase from just under 50,000 in the 1966 census to about half a million today (admittedly in an increased area, but the areas included now but not in 1966 were barely populated in 1966). That "no one" clearly included the town planners, who made little provision for transport corridors as new settlement took place.

The old SCL south of Beenleigh would have saved very little if anything in the building of the new line. It is also difficult to see how the Gold Coast, booming as it has, suffered form the absence of a railway for thirty or more years. Even that new (passenger only) railway plays only a minor role in the transport of the area. And it has the role it has only thanks to cheap fares and free car parking at stations, which encourage long distance commuting.

I thoroughly enjoyed the train running and train working on the old SCL, was surprised at the intention to close it, and protested against the closure. It was clear to me from the experience of protesting that most of the modest number of protestors did not use the railway, and that across the affected area, the opposition was weak. The later movement for a replacement high quality railway was of the usual kind, an urging that it be provided at someone else's expense for local benefit.

Rod Milne said on p 142 that in later years, "picnic trains brought up thousands of passengers yearly" and "as an example" for the 1952 case, both sets of words implying that there were at least several cases of large numbers of picnic trains in a day. As it happens, the 1952 case is one example of two such postwar events where Southport was the destination (the second was in 1953). There was one later one on the SCL, to Coolangatta in 1955. There had been an earlier one to one of the places on the Tweed Heads line for Miss Australia judging, on 5^th October 1947 (see "Destination Sth Brisbane", Kerr and Armstrong, p 4). So far as I know, there was only one more event of this kind after the 1955 case. That was to Shorncliffer on 21st December 1958. There were none to Southport in the later years which are the author's subject. Running several trains in one day to a large beach event did not survive the earliest years of mass car ownership.

The 1952 case is that mentioned on p 147. A fuller account is given in an article by Stan Moore in the Queensland Division Supplement to the ARHS Bulletin (later Sunshine Express), October 1964, p 7, where it is stated that 4669 passengers travelled on the picnic trains, and 5647 on the line during the day, including on the regular trains. The "Courier-Mail" the following day reported that the special trains were booked out.

The QR ran additional trains on weekdays in the summer school holidays for two years in the late 1950s for six shillings return for adults and three shillings for children. The patronage was disappointing, and the trains were not run in later years.

On p 144, Rod Milne asks where the 13 engines coming to Southport on the 1952 4BH picnic were put. If Urangan on days of the Maryborough Railwaymen's picnic is any example, each engine was watered and placed on its return train as soon as possible after arrival, before access to that train was blocked by later arrivals, and a cleaner was rostered to tend fires on all these engines until the crews took over for the return trips. (At Urangan, in some years, some of the trains were run on to the jetty. In those cases, no locomotives were attached.)

It is said on p 144 that the fork line installed in 1959 made it much easier to turn the four-car 1800 class rail motor units later used on the Southport service. That statement is nonsense. The four-car 1800 class units had a power car at each with an outward facing driving cabin. They did not need turning. The 1800 class started to run to and from Southport in 1952, some seven years before the fork line was installed (as is said on p 145). It is unlikely that a four car 1800 class would have fitted on the apex of the Southport fork line in any case.

It is also said there that chronic difficulties were encountered turning locos on the turntable, and that in 1959 the fork line was constructed. The fork line was indeed built, but the reason given for its construction is a jumped to conclusion, that because the fork line was built there must have been something wrong with the turntable. Had there been something wrong with the turntable, it would have been repaired, just as other turntables were repaired as necessary, including those which were used more intensively than that at Southport and for long after use of the Southport turntable ceased. There cannot have been much wrong with the turntable structurally, because engines ran across it and were often parked on it until the line closed (see the photo on p 142).

I have never seen anything official on the reasons for building the fork line, but at about the time it was installed, I was told by a Station Master at Southport that it was installed so that two car 1800 class railcars could be conveniently turned. I recall being told much the same by locomotive crews.

The 1800s were four car sets, with a power car and driving controls at each end, one end capable of operation in multiple with the other. Advantage was taken of the absence of need to turn the four-car units in timetabling their use on Southport services. From the inception of the use of 1800s on the line, five minutes were allowed between a Friday evening up and its return to South Brisbane. In 1954, a six minutes turnround was added on Saturday mornings, and one of seven minutes on Thursday evenings (this en route to Tweed Heads).

Each four car set could also be operated as two two-car units. In that case, each half unit had to be turned at the end of its run. When a defect occurred in one two-car unit, and the traffic offering required all four cars, a locomotive hauled train had to be run instead. There were no spare two-car 1800 class units in Brisbane in the 1950s which could be added to the serviceable unit to restore the unit to four cars. It soon became apparent that many of the Southport services could in practice be operated by a two-car unit, however, and as early as 1953 some at least 1800 class services on the line were being operated by two-car units.

Where there was only a turntable, as at Southport, turning a two-car unit required the power car to be detached from the trailer, run to and balanced on the turntable. On a short 40 or 42 ft turntable as at Southport the turntable was longer then the 36½ft wheelbase, which allowed the more lightly loaded (eight tons) rear bogie to be placed at one end and the more heavily loaded (15 tons) power bogie to be placed closer to the centre, to assist balancing (overall the car was much lighter than the 64 tons of the heaviest PB15s). The turntable was manually operated, but that was no great difficulty.

Turning was also required at South Brisbane but the turntable there was longer, and was motored. As rail motor braking systems had different sized hoses from those used on locomotives and therefore on the turntable, using the motor on the turntable required that there be air in the reservoir from a previous turning of a locomotive. The turntable could in any case be operated manually. (Rail motors from Beaudesert and Cleveland were regularly turned on the turntable at South Brisbane.)

If the turntable at Southport was not used for turning two car 1800s, then it would have been necessary to run the vehicles empty trailer first to and from Ernest Junction to turn on the junction layout there. I cannot say whether that was ever done.

Whichever of these arrangements prevailed, it would not have been possible to turn the two car unit in the five or six minutes turnrounds mentioned, and it would have been necessary to operate locomotive hauled trains instead.

The second reason for having a fork line at Southport for two car 1800 class railcars was the proposal mentioned to me by the above-mentioned Station Master to run a four car unit from South Brisbane and divide it at Ernest Junction, two cars for Southport and two for Tweed Heads (a two-car unit could be turned on the fork line between Coolangatta and Tweed Heads). I do not know which services were planned for this operation. In the timetable in 1959, the year the fork line was opened, there were up locomotive hauled services on Friday evenings, Saturday mornings and midday, and Sunday mornings which divided at Ernest Junction into portions for both Southport and Tweed Heads, which (with some rearrangement of services) might have been candidates, and extra services might have been planned. Nothing came of the proposal. See below for a difficulty with such a proposal.

There was local opposition to the construction and use of the fork line at Southport (crossing a street, running beside houses). As it had been built, however, the QR was not going to be seen not using it, and the turntable was fixed in position, unavailable for turning locomotives. It was not removed, and locomotives ran over it until the line closed.

Rod Milne says on p 145 that Southport had a suburban halt of sorts, called Southport Showgrounds. He does not define what he means by halt, but by any definition Southport Showgrounds could not be called a halt. The QR had places which it described at note "d" in its Public and Working Timetables as:

"Train stops to pick up passengers on driver observing passengers waiting on platforms, or to set down passengers if required. Passengers wishing to alight should give due notice to Guard. Guard will collect tickets. No persons except intending passengers should go on these platforms."

These were originally places without any staff at any time, but from the 1950s, note "d" was also used for staffed stations when the staff were not on duty. People with other business, to do with parcels, cream and mail, could not avoid going on to the "platforms" at these places, and there were sidings at some, for wagonload traffic. Not many of them had a platform in the accepted sense in any case, but that is another subject.

The QR did not call these places halts. They were in the broadest sense stations, but to differentiate them from other stopping places, they were called isolated sidings or d stops. On those railways which used the term halt, such places were the equivalent of the QR d stop. Further, QR d stops were shown in the Public and Working Timetables, and Southport Showgrounds was not shown in either. Passengers could not turn up at Southport Showgrounds and attempt to flag down a train, or ask the guard to stop a train there for them to detrain.

Further, the location could not be called a suburb of Southport as that town was when the railway was closed.

The stock race was provided at Southport Showgrounds in 1954 when livestock facilities were withdrawn from Southport station (WN24/54) to make way for rearrangements discussed in Rod Milne's article.

Rod Milne says that the IC wagon on 36 up on 30th August 1951 would have led to a shunt pushing out from Southport to the Showgrounds early the following morning. That is not necessarily so. More likely, the train would have stopped on the main line for the few animals in one wagon to be unloaded, as mentioned a few lines earlier; or if the animals were horses (often carried in IC wagons), they could have been unloaded at the side loading bank at Southport itself.

Rod Milne remarks on what he considers to be the injustice of the SM at Southport being classified as third class. Every employee on the QR considered his post was classified too low and that the rate of pay for the grade was too low. There were classification boards to ensure parity among the grades and classifications of staff in all branches of the QR. I am not aware of the criteria they employed, but I imagine that work content and staff supervised as well as staff to assist were relevant. Tons handled would not have raised the classification a great deal if that tonnage was largely loaded or unloaded by the customers. In any case, the tonnages at Southport were not great. Passenger numbers would not have done much to raise classifications if there were booking clerks to handle the work. In any case, passenger traffic was in sharp decline. It is of course possible that Southport was a higher grade than third when passenger traffic was at its height, and was reclassified downwards as the traffic fell.

To put the matter in some perspective, WN5/47 shows that early in 1947, there were only 13 first class Station Masters on the system (there were a few higher special grade SMs as well). South Brisbane had a first class SM, and that man was in charge of both the main and Interstate stations there. In comparison, third class for Southport seems reasonable.

Both the Unions and the management regularly sought revisions in classifications. What each side requested was often not what the incumbent wanted. Incumbents did not necessarily draw attention to what they thought was an injustice in classification because, if the post was reclassified upwards, it was declared vacant, so that everyone with the necessary seniority could apply for it. The incumbent could then well lose the post. If it was reclassified downwards, he would have to move to preserve his classification, or accept regression to a lower grade to retain the post.

In giving the compositions of passenger trains (no source given), Rod Milne does not remark on differences from day to day in what a given train number represented. At the time he wrote about, 6 up was the early morning all stations train from South Brisbane to Southport on Mondays to Fridays, a partly express railcar on Saturdays and an express locomotive hauled train (finally a railcar) on Sundays. For most of his period, therefore, 1800 class railcars were seen on a train with this number on Saturdays only and on Sundays at the very end. No. 8 was the mid morning passenger and fast freight on Mondays to Fridays and an early express on Saturdays.

Table 2 therefore shows 6 up express on Sundays, except that 18^th August 1960 (a Thursday) should presumably be 18^th September, and 6^th May 1960 a Saturday, if correct, is a locomotive hauled train replacing the 6 up railcar. All the 6 ups in Table 3 are railcars on Saturdays.

As the train loads for the PB15 class locomotives used on the SCL were so low, the frequency of goods trains above the scheduled once or twice daily was a function of the traffic. Some goods trains were indeed double headed. The service to Nerang after the section beyond to Tweed Heads closed, ie 1961 to 1964, was twice each weekday.

Rod Milne mentions on p 147 a regular goods train from Southport on Saturday afternoons in later years. I do not recall this train, and cannot find it in WTTs. Presumably when it ran it was a special. No steam engines regularly worked into or out of Southport on passenger trains on ordinary weekends after May 1963, and for a year before that the only steam service was one from South Brisbane and return. I am not one hundred per cent sure, but I think that in 1963-4, Wooloongabba depot did not operate on Saturdays either, and the engines for the only steam operated services into and out of South Brisbane on Saturdays were lit up and put away at South Brisbane and Beenleigh.

I have some memoirs of the late Ern Heath. His experiences as a traffic employee of the NSW Railways were published in ARH, February 2004, p 70. Unusually, he was subsequently a QR engineman from August 1955 to May 1956 and from July 1957 to retirement in October 1992.

In 1960 while a trainee engineman (cleaner) at Wooloongabba, Brisbane, he was temporarily transferred to Southport. A fireman post there became vacant and Ern, who had passed the fireman's exams, filled it temporarily. In view of the uncertainty about the future of the Tweed Heads branch, the post was not filled permanently, and Ern remained at Southport, continuing to fill the post temporarily. He lived in a room under the quarters (the correct QR name for the building marked Barracks in the Southport yard diagram in the article).

There were then seven sets of enginemen at Southport, each working five days per week, with the pairing of driver and fireman changed each week. A good proportion of the work was to and towards Brisbane. This included the night goods, changing en route with a Wooloongabba crew. They then worked all trains on the Tweed branch except for the goods (worked by a crew at Tweed Heads who changed en route with a Wooloongabba crew). One Friday evening train to Tweed Heads required camping there for the night.

One job was the morning all stations train from Southport to South Brisbane, then light engine to Wooloongabba. There a prepared PB15 was taken in exchange, and used to work 8 up, the fast freight express from South Brisbane to Southport. Another was the connection from that fast freight to Tweed Heads and return each weekday.

One interesting shift for Southport crews had disappeared by then. This was the Friday down afternoon express (fast freight) from Southport to South Brisbane (165), then return to Southport on the 5.23 pm express (148), then after half an hour to run to Tweed Heads with the connection off the 6.05 pm from South Brisbane (152), and return to Southport as engine and van.

He claimed that the easiest job at Southport was working a mineral concentrates train to Wooloongabba, five MTW wagons with containers of the concentrates, and van, 190 tons, the limit in the down direction, set by the short section near Ormeau, which meant that the rest of the run was not difficult. At Wooloongabba, the crew transferred to a prepared PB15 already attached to an assembled empty version of the same train, sometimes with a few other wagons as well, well below full load, to take back to Southport.

On closure of the Tweed Heads branch, he returned to Wooloongabba.

Rod Milne claims that the full benefit or potential of the 1800 and later 2000 class railcars was not realised on the SCL, but he does not explain or substantiate this claim. He also says that Southport passengers enjoyed the comfort of the 1800 class. The 1800s were not especially comfortable. Although their width gave greater lateral space than in second class in the passenger carriages used on the line, the seats were close together longitudinally, and the cars did not ride well.

Rod Milne does not explain his claim that the 1800s had their fair share of design problems which he further claims limited their use. They were not especially popular with fitters or drivers, but they were used intensively, and some lasted for thirty years. It is doubtful if their availability for traffic during the period under consideration was much worse than other QR railcars. An article about Southport is hardly the place to make fleeting and unsubstantiated comments on supposed design problems.

The location of the driver in the centre of the cab of the power car led to a practice required only on the SCL, that of the guard having to come to the driver's compartment to exchange the staff at stations where the cars did not stop. The guard could come only to the left side of the driver, which meant the exchange was made on that side, the opposite of the side for exchange with red rail motors, in which the driver sat on the right side. Elsewhere on the system, 1800s seldom ran non-stop through attended crossing stations on single line. That location also meant that shunting a power car on to a trailer required an extra man to relay hand signals to the driver.

On p 147, the 1800s are said to have been jumbled up in curious four car sets. They could not run with vehicles other than their own class, so they were never jumbled up, and it is not explained why they were curious in the form in which they ran. The trailers were much shorter than the power cars, but were of the same cross-section, general design and colour scheme.

It is said on p 146 that 1808, 1809, 1810 and 1811 of this class were all commonly rostered on the SCL in the mid and late 1950s. The use of "all" and "commonly" in this context is odd, because those four vehicles were a single four car 1800 class set, 1808 and 1811 the two power cars on the ends, and 1809 and 1810 the two trailers between them. Further, that was the form in which that four car unit was built, with no substitution of power cars or trailers from other sets (as occurred with some of the sets shown in Table 3). The first set allocated to the South Coast Line workings in 1952 was 1800 to 1803.

Until the early 1960s there was only one 1800 class set at South Brisbane to operate all the railcar services on the SCL and a few in the Brisbane suburbs. Elsewhere when the six four car 1800 class sets required overhaul, a red rail motor was substituted if available, the service was operated with two cars of the four, or a locomotive hauled train substituted. On the SCL, with the traffic exceeding the capacity of two cars on some services, and the difficulties of turning the two cars at Southport, a locomotive hauled train substituted on many services.

Rod Milne mentions the possibility of dividing four car 1800 class trains at Ernest Junction, two cars for Southport and two for Tweed Heads. See also above about the fork line at Southport. It would have been necessary to ferry a driver and guard from Southport to Ernest Junction by road or light engine to take over the detached portion. The connection from Southport to the Tweed Heads line would have been lost, but it was not used by many in any case, especially in the late 1950s. More important was the balance of traffic for each destination. Each half unit could carry 94 passengers. Traffic to and from Southport was more than double that at all stations on the Tweed Heads branch. At least on some services after their introduction, the half unit for Southport would have been overcrowded, that for Tweed Heads far from full.

The 2000 class cars were indeed comfortable, and rode very well. Their higher power to weight ratio allowed them to run faster schedules than locomotive hauled trains or the 1800 class. The reduction in running times on expresses was not spectacular, but on trains which stopped at all stations south of Beenleigh, the reductions were considerable.

Rod Milne fails to mention two developments. From 19th February 1962, a commuter railcar service was introduced, leaving Southport at 6.43 am and South Brisbane at 5.40 pm, Mondays to Fridays. The latter replaced the previous 5.20 pm (or close) Fridays up express, not long before the heaviest single engine up passenger train on the line.

The second is that, in the face of continually declining patronage, from 7th May 1963, almost all passenger trains between South Brisbane and Southport were operated by railcars, including all on Saturdays and Sundays. The exceptions were on Mondays to Fridays, the early morning up and afternoon down all stations trains, and the up and down fast freight service. Almost all the railcar services were operated with two car 2000 class units, but on Sundays, the two morning up and two evening down were operated with four car 1800 class units. Thus, of the 29 passenger services each way per week, 19 were railcar operated. This was the highest number of services ever operated per week between the two places, apart from holiday periods.

At long weekends, locomotive hauled trains replaced some of the railcar services and there were some extra services.

Rod Milne is not explicit about the history of the fast freight service. It started in the period he is writing about. Until 1957, the morning up express to both SCL termini on Mondays to Fridays, 8 up, left South Brisbane at 8.25, and the down arrived South Brisbane at 4.14. Patronage was poor and there was a long lay over time for crews at both Southport and Tweed Heads. From 18^th March 1957, these services were replaced by one leaving South Brisbane at 10.40, and arriving on return at 4.45. The passenger accommodation was roughly halved, and bogie covered louvred wagons allowed to run on passenger trains, initially all CJFP, added. These wagons carried freight collected and delivered by road at each end by a contractor, although in Brisbane a lot of it was delivered to his depot, which at South Brisbane was on the un-numbered sixth platform, which had road access from Russell Street. This was referred to in the WTTs as the Fast Freight Service in the up direction. The wagons were almost entirely empty on the down. It was not restricted to perishables, and its traffic was general less-than-wagon-load, including perishables.

I think the contractor also provided the door-to-door service using the night goods train from Wooloongabba, and was thus able to make deliveries on the Gold Coast both early morning as well as early afternoon, but I have no record of this.

I do not understand what Rod Milne means when he refers to this service (p 146) as almost constituting a third express freight type working. It was the only fast or express freight service on the line. It did result in a third type of service for small items. These could be sent as parcels, by passenger carrying trains, despatched and received at the Parcels Offices at each end. That was express, but the parcels were not carried on a freight train, and the service was not door-to-door. Or they could be sent as goods, subject to various size limitations, despatched and received at the Goods Sheds at each end. That was indeed a freight service, but it was not express, indeed it was not usually same day. These were the usual two qualities offered by the QR. And there was the co-ordinated fast freight service, picked up and delivered door-to-door by the contractor, indeed express, but not open to all types of goods.

This co-ordinated (road and rail) service had two aims, to counter the border hopper services for general freight, and to make some use of the weekday expresses on which patronage was light. Again, the QR probably made little from it.

Locomotives

Rod Milne says (p 147) that the newer PB15s tended to get preference for the passenger train workings. While this is the way it largely turned out, the provisions on which of the PB15s were used on passenger trains was not based on their age. The original (1899-1912) PB15s were all built with tenders carrying 1800 gallons of water, the later 1924 design had tenders with 2500 gallons of water. Running from South Brisbane to Southport without taking water en route required use of engines with the larger tenders. Water was available at Kingston in the up direction and Beenleigh in the down.

The WTTs provided that the express trains to the SCL be worked by PB15s with large tenders. There were also all stations trains to and from Southport, which stopped at every suburban station as well as the stations beyond the suburban area. Most of these, especially in the up direction, were not allowed time en route to take water, a blessing in that doing so would have made them even slower. There were no provisions in the WTT about the type of PB15 to haul them, but to ensure on time running, they too were usually worked by a PB15 with a large tender. Some peak hour trains to and from Cleveland were also worked with engines with large tenders to save the time needed to take water en route at Manly.

As well as the 1924 engines, there was usually at least one of the original PB15s attached to Wooloongabba (the locomotive depot for the lines on the south side of Brisbane) with a large tender. These included at various times 413, 488, 579 and 606. No. 488 was so fitted for many years continuously until after the line closed. When fitted with such a tender, these original engines were used on the trains requiring such. An example is given in Table 2, with 488 on 6 up, the Sunday morning express on 20^th September 1959. Similarly, when No. 745 of the 1924 design temporarily had a small capacity tender it was not used on those trains.

In May 1959, PB15 413, at the time with a small tender, ran a four car train replacing a four unit 1800 class railcar. On the up, this was all stations from Bethania to Southport, and the run was made without taking water. On the down, the train made four stops. It ran early into Beenleigh, where the tender was topped up.

The 1924 engines also carried more coal. It was specially advantageous to use them on trains to Southport, because they could make two runs from there to Tweed Heads and back and back to Brisbane on the tender of coal, saving any need to recoal manually at Southport. The engines with the smaller tenders could do only one run from Southport to Tweed Heads. The cleaner at Southport shovelled coal forward or trimmed it, as well as recoaling when needed.

Until the mid 1950s, one or more B15Converteds were attached to Wooloongabba, to work goods trains on the SCL, because their loads were ten tons heavier that those of PB15s on the limiting sections.

Rod Milne claims on p 144 that there was a large double bracket home signal at the throat of the yard with three arms. I could not remember that existing in the period he is describing, and checked the QR plan of the yard of 1949, which shows a single up home signal, and a distant 18 chains beyond. These were operated from two levers on the platform. There was no lever for the supposed starter. It would be interesting to know when the signalling described existed, and references to its being changed. It certainly did not exist in the period he is describing.

It is said that the gates at the level crossing at Nind and High Streets, at the entry to the yard, were attended until 1923. What happened in 1923 (WN 39/23) was removal of the gates, ie conversion of the level crossing to open. A speed limit of 4 mph was then imposed on trains. It was not observed by any train I saw or travelled on. I am sure I crossed it at speeds of over 30 mph on up trains.

On p 148 it is said that Ernest Junction could almost be described as being in the yard environs of Southport. It was 3½ miles east, and was not within the yard or the environs of Southport, even almost. It had its own staff, and was not under the control of Southport at all. Such a description would be wrong.

Before Rod Milne's period, however, there was an unusual connection between the two places which is worth recording as an unusual way of working Ernest Junction when its own staff were off duty in the middle of the night. In the 1946 WTT, it was provided that when necessary an officer was to travel from Southport on 194A Southport to Tweed Heads goods at 12.45 am on Tuesdays to Saturdays. 194A was to stop at the Ernest Junction home signal while that officer went ahead to the station, to place the up (Brisbane end) signals at danger, then admit 194A, and then 194, the connecting goods train from Wooloongabba to Southport.

At that time, two of the electric staves for the section were divisible, and one of them was used for 194A. At Ernest Junction, the officer was to give the ticket portion to the driver of 194, showing him the head, then leave the headed portion of the staff in a lock-up box for the following Wooloongabba to Southport goods, 36 up. Presumably the officer returned to Southport on 194. That officer was probably the Assistant Station Master or Night Officer on duty at Southport. If that is the case, 194 must have stopped at the Southport home signal to allow the officer to walk forward and admit the train, but the WTT is silent on that. He did not stay on duty for the arrival of 36 up, however, which arrived Southport as an unattended station.

After 1961, however, when the interlocking was removed, Ernest Junction became an unattended staff station, ie it then had no staff, and train crews worked trains through the station. For safe working purposes, it was under the control of Supervising Stations on each side. Those stations issued forms to the train crews instructing them how to work through the place, and Southport was always one of them. But that did not make Ernest Junction any more part of Southport.

On p 146 it is said that "Southport goods trains were usually well loaded and very testing for the small PB15 class locos used there. Gradient and curvature limited loads…" After the realignments for the Yeerongpilly to Kuraby duplication of 1950-52, the through load up was 200 tons. This was set by the ¾ mile leading to Altandi and the mile leading to Ernest Junction tunnel. In the down direction, the through load was 190 tons, set by the half mile leaving Ormeau. These loads were the usual for the gradients encountered in those places. Loads for intermediate sections were higher. As the through load was set by such short distances, working a goods train on this line was not an especially difficult proposition, and the distance was short (see also comments of Ern Heath above).

The photographs on pp 144 and 148 show the carriages used on the SCL to a large extent, the so-called Relief Carriages. They provided high capacity with light weight and tolerable comfort. The light weight allowed the small PB15 engines to haul a respectable number of passengers at (considering the alignment of the line) good speeds. In a body 40 ft long, the composite lavatory car (as 874) seated 16 first and 40 second class passengers for a tare weight of 17½ tons. The brake version (as 870) seated 16 and 20 respectively. Six of these cars were within the 110 tons tare load for the express timetables for a PB15 on the SCL. As this usually included two brake versions of these cars (one for each terminus), that load provided seats for just under 300 passengers.

A full history of these vehicles in given in notes of mine on the Bundy Compos (another name for them) in Sunshine Express October 1986 p 174 and September 1987 p 138.

Both the cars illustrated have what were called reversible boards on the sides, hinged to alter the class of the first class compartment to second to suit passenger loadings (it was always worth looking for any of these when travelling second because the first class seating was two plus two across instead of two plus three). In these cases, "smoking" was shown on the doors, but on other carriages used elsewhere on the system, such boards changed compartments from smoking to non-smoking, and others from sleeping to sitting.

While the list at the end of the article no doubt covers those the author wishes to acknowledge, it is not a list of references or sources readers could consult to obtain authority for points made in the article, eg to the installation of the fork line, the signalling, or to the arrangements for the picnic trains.

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2 August 2006, amended 14 February 2007, amended 31 August 2009