The Collection

Railway Lore – The Iron Road

Our railways were born in the chaos of the 1850s and 1860s gold rushes and are the classic example of labour versus ownership. It was the very same independence expressed by miners that irked the authorities, eventually resulting in the bloody clash at the Eureka Stockade. Here were men, on the goldfields, actually working for ‘themselves’; even if most were scratching the riverbeds to little avail, but answering ‘to no man’. It was this ‘master and servant’ revolution that prompted the colonial governments to drive the troopers to inspect and collect gold licenses. Workers were still seen as little more than servants and, in a country born of convicts, it was very evident in our particular history. The shearers and other bush workers later experienced the same struggle, and their conditions, sometimes completely unfair, resulted in bitter battles, sometimes violent, coming to a head in the 1890s with the so-called ‘Great Shearer’s Strike’. The railways were built on struggle and, eventually, arbitration. For some the struggle continues.

2005 celebrated the 150th anniversary of railways in Australia and this collection attempts to celebrate the men and women who carried our railway folklore down those tracks.

It is a rambling journey, typical of our rail lines that sneaked around mountains, down gullies, over plains and across bridges. It is, of course, a mere sampling of the creativity of the average Australian and their relationship with the heritage of our railways. Some of the material appears elsewhere in my site and some has been garnered from oral histories and library collections. It is a sampling of history, stories, poems, yarns and photographs.

As a folklore collector and performer I have had an ongoing interest in rail folklore. I am of an age – 60 of them – where I can remember the sound, smell and sight of steam trains and double-decker electric rail buses. I remember the awe I felt when I first visited Central Railway Station with its enormous arched domes, endless tracking systems and the gigantic indicator board that seemed to have a life of its own as the staff used long poles to change the destination departure and arrival plates.

I remember eating a meal in the railway refreshment room, at Central, and staring in wonder at the shining cutlery and stamped crockery. I now know I was at the tail end of an era that viewed these mighty inventions as a revolutionary means of transport. We have certainly become blasé about train travel but folklore can remind us of this heritage. One of my first ABC radio series, in the late 1960s was ‘Navvy on the Line’ – a program on our railway folk songs and poetry. I suspect it was the first ABC program to look at our industrial folklore. Some of the songs in the program, sung by the first incarnation of my group, The Larrikins, were later released as a Larrikin LP of the same name (Larrikin LRF009). It has been good to revisit these songs and to put some of the recently collected folklore into perspective.

The ‘folk’ create rail folklore for several reasons including:

• to record fear of the unknown (supposed danger of train travel)
• to record their own history (especially in times of disaster)
• to celebrate an event (the opening of a new railway)
• to express frustration (about slow trains)
• to use as a propaganda tool (strike songs)
• to show solidarity (in union struggles)
• to ridicule as an expression of frustration
• for general entertainment.

Railway folklore is expressed in many ways: including:

• songs and poetry
• bawdry
• yarns
• first day apprentice pranks and initiation
• nicknames
• word usage and slang
• traditional costume
• superstitions and ghost stories
• traditional working methods and tools
• distinctive food – the railway pie.
• Traditional signage and architecture
• Urban myths.

The first railway in Australia, undertaken by the Sydney Railway Company, was commenced on July, 30, 1850, to run between Sydney and Parramatta. Many said it was doomed to failure because of the cost and relatively small population of the colony.

The 14 miles of rail track took a staggering five years to complete and created mayhem in both private and government circles. Established by a private railway developer the company simply could not retain its workforce despite ‘importing’ thousands of navvies from Britain. As soon as these men of the axe, pick and shovel, heard a whisper about ‘free labourers’ and the possibility of gold – they downed tools and literally walked off the job and headed West. In one year over 500 imported labourers hot-footed it to the goldfields.

New South Wales really didn’t have the first steam engine. The truth is that those bastards on the Yarra Yarra River had the first steam train one year earlier………

Let me take you back to colonial Australia pre-1850. A vast expanse of country with displaced indigenous tribes, convict settlements, bolters and bushrangers, bulging colonial towns and a raggedly network of rural outposts servicing the remote pioneering farming stations.

Australia was determined to have railways, and the experience of the Melbourne and Hobson’s Bay Railway Company, is a typical example of the optimism of the time. This company ordered locomotives, carriages and wagons from England. The carriages and wagons arrived, but the four locomotives did not. This was an obvious setback but the directors wanted to go ahead without delay so they ordered a locomotive from Robertson, Martin, Smith and Company, of Melbourne, and entrusted the making of parts of the boiler to the Langland’s Foundry. A 30-h.p. locomotive was completed in ten weeks, and was the first built in Australia.

Thus on September 12, 1854, the first railway in Victoria and the first locomotive operated railway in Australia, was declared opened. The gauge was 5 ft. 3 in. and the distance was over two-miles between Flinders Street, Melbourne, and Port Melbourne.

New South Wales certainly started their railway earlier but didn’t steam it up until September 1855.

The history of the railway in Australia is both colourful and, at times, tragic. Sadly, there have been some horrific accidents. One of the earliest was the Sunshine, Victoria, crash.

The Sunshine Railway Disaster Tune: If Those Lips Could Only Speak If those trains had only run As they should, their proper time, There wouldn’t have been a disaster At a place they call Sunshine. If those brakes had only held As they did a few hours before There wouldn’t have been a disaster And a death-roll of forty-four. The doctors and nurses arrived there And the sight it caused them pain To see all the wounded and dying In the wreck of that fateful train. The people of Sunshine ne’er faltered, But assisted with all their power To help the doctors and nurses In that awful painful hour. He was driving a Bendigo engine, The train was running all right. It was going along as usual, Till Sunshine came in sight. He put on his brakes and he whistled, For the signal was against the train;  He applied his brakes for emergency, But alas! It was all in vain. CHORUS: If those brakes had only gripped, As they did a while before, There would be no Sunshine disaster Or deaths numbering forty-four. If that guard had only seen, That danger lay ahead, There would be no widows or orphans But happier homes instead.   SOURCE MRS PEG COLLINS Perth 1974. Fahey Collection

WILLIAM WEBSTER  the first railway engineer..

During some intensive Mitchell Library research I was fortunate to find three first-hand accounts of the inaugural Sydney to Parramatta train journey in the (Sydney) Evening News 25/9/1905

Mr William Webster of Metropolitan Road, Enmore, NSW, retired from the service in 1892. Following is an interview with the Evening News 1905, on the occasion of the railway’s 50th anniversary.

“For six months before the opening of the (Sydney Parramatta) Line, I was fireman of the contractor’s ballast engine – in fact, I was the first fireman appointed. On May 24th, Queen’s Birthday, 1855, four months previous to the opening, we (Sixthsmith and I) took the first passenger train out of Redfern Station. William Sixsmith was the driver. 
It was a trial run and we had on board Sir William Denison, the Governor, and a few other gentlemen. That journey only extended as far as the Lane Cove Viaduct, near Lewisham. It was actually the first train that was run.

I did not have charge of the train on opening day. The first train on the opening day was drawn by engine number two. Sam Twiss was the driver, and Peter Woods was the fireman. They’re both dead now, Peter died in Melbourne only a few years ago.

We did however take what was considered to be the train of the day – the official train that carried the Governor and party, and all the principal excursionists.

There were not more than half a dozen carriages. The Third Class carriage had a roof but they were entirely opened at the sides, above a height. With the exception of those at the ends, the seats hadn’t any backs. The Second Class were the ordinary closed carriages of the day. They had no cushions or padded backs or anything of that kind. Just bare boards. But the First Class carriages were well upholstered. I saw some of those on the Great Northern Line when I went to England a few years ago when they gave me six month’s leave at half pay.

In those days we did not run right into Parramatta town. The first Parramatta station was a little way beyond Granville – at Dog Trap Creek. The present station at Parramatta wasn’t built until 1860; five years later.

I hadn’t any experience when I took the job. My experience was entirely local. I am a native of Kent, England, and came out to Victoria in 1852, where I spent two years on the diggings at Bendigo. I didn’t make my fortune there, however.

When I came to Sydney I had one-pound weight of gold, the result of two years’ work.

I was the first colonially-made driver but Sixsmith may be considered the father of enginemen in New South Wales. He and Twiss had previous railway experience.

Twiss, in fact, had been firing for Sixsmith in France, on the railway works that were being carried out by Mr Thomas Brassey – father of Lord Brassey. They came out here in search of gold, like a good many more; and, like many more, they gravitated to the railways. Mr Joseph Twiss, brother of Sam, was the railway superintendent of the day.

The first Redfern Station was only a temporary building with a single line in it. I don’t think you would have seen more than five or six silk hats on it in those days.

The line to Parramatta was through the bush. There wasn’t much settlement. When you came through the Eveleigh Tunnel you found scrub on the left-hand side of the line.. Where the Eveleigh workshops are now was then all scrub too, it was known as the Chisholm Estate.

The first job I had on the railways, by the way, was to get out the foundation of a shed for the ballast-engine, just about at that point – nearly opposite where Calder House (the old Chisholm homestead) now stands.

I suppose the first engine was an object of some interest in Sydney, when it arrived, but not as much as you would think. There were fewer people about then, to make a crowd – no unemployment, for instance. The engine, which arrived in the ship ‘John Fulden’, was taken in pieces to a shed and erected under the supervision of Mr Twiss. We started ballasting with it in, I think, the middle of April. I was then appointed fireman, and Sixsmith driver.

But to continue as I was saying about the journey along the line. There were bridges at Erskineville Road, and at Newtown Road. At Petersham there wasn’t a house – excepting three small cottages, that had been put up by a railway bricklayer – nearer than the Bald Faced Stag (Hotel), on the Parramatta Road. The train did the journey to Parramatta in forty minutes – well, it was only thirteen and a half miles and we only stopped four times at Newtown, Ashfield, Burwood and Homebush.
A little while after the railway line opened, Randle put ten minutes on to our running time, and made it fifty. That was to save the wheels by not running fast around curves.

Patent rails were used, they were intended to do without the ballast, but they were proved to be an utter failure, and were replaced by the ordinary double-faced rail. Then, in ballasting, sand was first used, but it was found to be impractical, and road metal was substituted.

The first locomotives introduced were intended to run on rubber springs. They ran very smoothly for a little while, until the springs gave, and had to be replaced by steel ones.

Only a single line to Parramatta had been completed when the railway was opened; the second line was laid afterwards.

Down the Lane Cove Creek there were a few houses. The two bridges at Ashfield were there in those days. But after you left Ashfield there was nothing but bush until you reached the Horse and Jockey (Hotel) at Homebush, and a residence – the house of a lawyer named Dunsmuir. Beyond that again it was only bush until you reached Granville, where Randle’s railway workshops were.

Mr Randle was the contractor for the line, and he ran it, by arrangement with the Government, for a year after the opening. He paid them fifty five per cent of the receipts, and defraying all costs except the wages of some stationmasters and porters. As he was contractor for the extension to Liverpool, this paid him handsomely, as he was able to take all his ballast and material over the existing line free of cost.

They tried very hard to bring the town of Parramatta down to where the first railway engine was, but they could not get the people to come. A man named Moon erected a hotel and called it – let me see; what was it he called it again? I forget now, but it was the same name as some tea garden at Home.

They had a land sale there, too, and tried to persuade people to build a town. But they would not come. Buses used to take the passengers from the station into Parramatta.

Randle started two buses in Sydney, running to the station, and one ran a little while between Newtown Station and Cook’s River.

At the end of September 1855, when the Liverpool section was opened, the line came altogether under Government control, and I entered the Government service as an engine driver. From that time, I drove along the line as each section was completed.

In the bushranging days, drivers often contemplated the possibility of their trains being stuck up or wrecked. We used to frequently carry the railway takings and gold escort.

One dangerous and secluded spot on the line had always appeared to being just the right sort of place for train-wrecking robbers. That was the southern line, between Picton and Mittagong, and the foot of what is now known as Big Hill. At that time there was no habitation near the place, and knowing an ideal spot it would be to rob a train, I never felt comfortable, especially when we had treasure aboard, until we got past it.

Engine driving has been termed a nerve-killing occupation. I drove for twenty years, up the time I was promoted to locomotive inspector. If a man is driving an express train through a tunnel, or over a network of points at a junction, you have to wonder whether there is an obstruction ahead, or whether the points were all right.”
Evening News 25/9/1905

Engineman William Sexsmith

A first hand account of the inaugural journey by ENGINEMAN SIXSMITH

(Mr William Sexsmith – interviewed in 1895 and filed by the Railway Commission of that time.)

When did I first become connected with railway working? Why, before I was twelve years old. My first job was carrying picks for the stonecutters on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the first railway in England, which was then only being cut. There was a large cutting called Olive Mount Cutting, from which all the stone was taken for the railway. The rails were laid on large blocks of stone; about two foot four inches, to two foot six inches square, by about eighteen inches deep, in lieu of sleepers.

I was engine-driving for nearly twenty years in the old country on the Liverpool and Manchester Line and the London and North Western Line, then known as the London and Birmingham Line, before coming to Australia. I was also driving in Ireland, and for three years in France on the Paris and Rouen. I came to New South Wales with the contractor for the Parramatta Line, Mr Randle, and worked for him in connection with the ballasting of the line.

I was the only driver in the colony. There was another man after the line was opened. His name was Sam Twiss.

I took the first train out of Redfern, Governor Denison was on board, and we drove to Parramatta and back. I have a watch here given to me at the time – having the inscription ‘Sydney railway, September 1855. Engineman William Sixsmith.’ You don’t get such watches nowadays. I have never had a new glass on it. There were four of these handed out, one to each of the enginemen and one each of the guards. We started the train, I suppose, about nine or ten o’clock in the morning. It was a holiday for the rest of the people. I suppose nearly all the people of New South Wales were there, but it wasn’t very much of a holiday for me. I had been working pretty well all day and night for a week previously, without sleep almost, to get the ballasting finished, and after I had driven the people to and fro all the day I had to take the navvies over. It was after 11 o’clock at night before I was finished. Why, I was working over 20 years here and never had a holiday. Things are now much altered for the better.

We had four engines at first. The first engine, known as ‘number one’ was built by Stephenson, and is to be seen in the technological Museum. Then, two others were brought out. Another engine was brought out by the contractor for use as a ballast engine, and the Government took that over also. It was known as ‘The Governor General’.

At that time the country between here and Parramatta was nearly all bush. There was a stray public house here and there on the roadside. Parramatta was a nice little town at that time.”

A UNIVERSITY OPINION ON PIONEER RAILWAYS:

(Sydney University Magazine January 1855.)

Of all the known modes of overland transport, the cheapest, the safest, the quickest, in every respect the best, is by railway, where the traffic is sufficiently great to justify such an undertaking. We cannot sufficiently emphasis this condition; where it does not hold, a railway is an absolute loss. No railroad will be of any real advantage to this colony, unless the traffic be such as to yield a fair interest upon the outlay, at the same time that the cost of transport be diminished. After much consideration we feel no hesitation in recording our opinion that the time has not arrived when it will be advisable to establish railways in this colony. We cannot point out any two towns between which the traffic is so great as to pay the working expenses of such an establishment. The traffic between Sydney and Goulburn is not, nor likely to be such, for many years to come; and it is allowed that upon the Southern road, the traffic is greater than upon any other. We shall, therefore, have made out our case against railways satisfactorily, if we show that it is not advisable to extend the present line in the direction of Goulburn. It is scarcely worth while to allude to that palpable and notorious folly, the Parramatta Railway. If it were not too late to do any good, we could prove to the conviction of every reasonable person, the entire, the wild impossibility of its paying its working expenses – its utter usefulness to the community at large. The largest increase in the population of this colony ever received in one year by immigration was in 1853, when the gold fever produced its greatest effect. In that year the total increase by immigration was 18,350, of which 10, 472 were introduced at the public expense, leaving 7938 as the maximum effect produced upon our population by the greatest conceivable exciting cause acting upon the people of Europe. It does not seem a very promising speculation to make a railway, and then import people at the public expense to travel upon it’.

The First Train

AN OLD COLONIST’S REMINISCENCES on watching the first train start.

(Mr John Bennett was the forerunner to Mr J C Williamson in the theatrical management line and was manager of Sydney Theatre)

Do I remember this day fifty years ago? I should rather think so. I wasn’t much more than a boy in those days; but that first railway interested me immensely. I had shares in it, and those shares gave me a lot of bother. The line had only been laid as far as Petersham, when the discovery of gold inland ran the cost of labour here up so much that no man would work under one pound a day, and all able-bodied men simply cleared for the gold fields. Randall, the contractor, could not carry out his contract, and the then Government had to come along to the aid of the shareholders, and help them to carry on the work by loaning them two hundred and fifty thousand pounds.

It was a great day, September 26, 1855. The whole of Sydney flocked to Redfern to see this new-fangled notion put into actual work. In that year I was living at Flagstaff Hill, now better known as Observatory Hill, and with the other sightseers I ended my way down George Street to the station.

And what a sight George Street was! Mind you, it was laid out just as it is now, macadamised, and with many buildings in it; but not such palatial edifices as now adorns it.

The men and women in the throng, too – how strange would their costumes appear to our eyes! The ladies were got up in crinolines covered with innumerable flounces of every hue, wearing on their heads the poke bonnets, now only associated with the female part of the congregation in the Society of Friends’ meeting houses. Their hair was done in a knob at the back, with a little curl below the knob, and side curls, as some may still see on the obverse of some of the Victorian coinage.

And the men – what beaux they looked in their peg-top trousers of canary or lavender, with a row of six pearl buttons on the inside of each ankle. Their headgear consisted of cabbage tree or beaver hats, set jauntily on their heads, and they twirled their canes and ogled and talked to the ladies as they strutted or drove down past the Haymarket, where, by the way, I recollect there was a pound in which strayed or ownerless horses were kept until either bailed out or sold.

You may be sure all the boys in Sydney were in George Street that day, some time or other, and we who were at the Sydney College and the boys at the Norman Institute, got a holiday for the occasion, and wended our way with the other crowds to Redfern.

By the way, every boy in those two institutions was regularly drilled in the sue and handling of the carbine, and as often as possible we used to be marched down to Rushcutters Bay, and there instructed in the art of firing. We had a range in that Bay, and constant practice soon made every lad a by no means bad marksman. This part of our training or education was considered second to none, and it would be better for Australia’s manhood of the future if such a course of drilling with arms and continuous firing practice was given a primary place in every school curriculum, instead of being, as it too often nowadays, mere dummy drill, and that but spasmodic.

We’ll get to Redfern sometime (laughed Mr Bennett)…

I went to the station with a very noted character in those days, none other than the aborigine Bungaree. This full-blooded black had a curious history. He was instrumental in saving the life of a station-owner, who in return had him treated more as a white man than a black, and eventually sent him home to Oxford University, where Bungaree did not do too badly.

Returning out here he showed uncommon aptitude as a draughtsman, and spoke English with a fine English accent. This was the companion I had with me when I went down George Street fifty years ago today, and as we chatted I asked him if he also had some shares in the railroad. “No,” said Bungaree, “no, this life is no good to me. I think I shall go up on the Clarence River back to my tribe. You see, Mr Bennett, I’m altogether a mistake. This education, which was to have been a blessing for me, is really a curse, because I am banned. No refined white woman would look at me for a moment, and I, with what I have learnt, could never look at a black gin again. I’ve got a lonely road ahead of me, and the only thing I can do is to answer the call of nature again.”
According to Mr Bennett, Bungaree was true to his word and disappeared in the bush on one of the northern rivers.

I’ve heard people say that the crowds that passed down Sydney’s main thoroughfare on the day we celebrate today fifty years ago passed gangs of chained convicts. This was not so, for though up to till very near that time chain gangs had been seen at work on the roads, as far as I knowledge goes there were none then.

There was an old tollgate standing at the end of Pitt Street, where it joins George Street, and there was a row of old military barracks, which I believe were also at one time headquarters of the Benevolent Society of New South Wales. Over where Toohey’s Brewery now stands was a fine big lake, having on its banks, curiously enough, another brewery and a soap-manufacturing factory.

When we arrived at the station, which was nothing like the big structure bearing that name today, we found all the world of Sydney and his wife there, including a party from Government House. There was also gathered just outside the station a great concourse of aborigines. They had been got together under the leadership of Rickety Dick, another noted Aborigine, from all around the country, and brought down to see the sight of the century, and we considered the starting of that first train. It was also used, no doubt, as an object lesson to those unsophisticated sons of the soil, that they might know and understand, if they could, the wonderful power of their white brothers. When the train started many of them were scared to death, and more than one took to his heels and bolted without waiting for the finish of the ceremonies.

Some of us white folks there weren’t much better, for many prospective travellers were so scared themselves that it became a question of general chaff who would go on, and it ended in our rulers, for the time being, setting the example, and entering the carriages, they were whirled off to Parramatta.

The first railway ticket ever sold in New South Wales was purchased by Mr Thomas Day, a well-known boat builder of Sydney. He went up to the station early and waited two hours in front of the ticket office before he got what he wanted – the ticket marked ‘number one’”

(Located by Warren Fahey in the (Sydney) Evening News 1905)

Popular Music

The railway has a long and close relationship with popular music – possibly more so than any other industry. This would be attributed to the ‘romance’ of the railways in taking loved ones on long voyages, men off to war, reuniting loved ones etc. So many songs have been written about train travel and in just about every musical genre.

Here’s a very short list of train and rail songs that were popular in Australia:

• Casey Jones
• Mystery Train (Junior Parker) and Elvis
• Train Yodel – Jimmy Rodgers
• Hold dat Train!
• Honky Tonk Blues (Ernest Tubb)
• Chattanooga Choo Choo (Harry Warren) Glenn Miller
• Rock Island Line – Lead belly
• Morningtown Ride – The Seekers
• Southern Aurora – The Joyboys
• MTA – Kingston Trio
• Freight Train – (Elizabeth Cotton)
• Peace Train – Cat Stevens
• Rhapsody in Blue (George Gershwin) inspired by train sounds
• City of New Orleans
• Finicula Finniculi

Robert Paling composed The Railway Waltz in 1855 for the grand opening of the Sydney to Parramatta line. This was one of the earliest dance compositions for railway, even before Strauss composed his Vienna Rail Waltz (1857).

Trains also featured in early feature films and film serials. The villain (hiss) always seemed to want to tie the poor innocent, young, attractive girl to the railway line. How they got there was usually never explained. The serials, especially thrillers like early ‘Spiderman’ also favoured trains and many the suspenseful serial ended its weekly showing at the stage when the train was about to be:

1. blown up
2. derailed
3. attacked by Red Indians
4. dynamited as it went over the bridge or
5. smashed head into another train.

These were exciting times for a youngster who had hardly been on a train. Later trains became the setting for a more romantic approach with films like Dr Zhivago and Some Like It Hot. Then there were the mystery films like Murder on the Orient Express and The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. Trains in cinema could be attacked by Indians, held up by robbers (especially Mexicans), blown up and, more recently, in Batman Returns, it becomes a runaway.

The 2004 Children’s Christmas film, The Polar Express features Tom Hanks as a genial guard and, in 2005, The Hogwart’s Express steamed into another Harry Potter adventure. Trains still capture our imagination.

The early days of Australian country music were heavily influenced by railway songs and our leading performers included them in their repertoire. There were two reasons for this popularity and both were related to the influence of so-called Country & Western music and especially as portrayed in 1930/40’s Hollywood films. The image of the smoking, fast approaching train was used in Westerns, city films and, of course, in cartoons.

The image of the young woman (or man) tied to the track by the nasty villain resulted in hissing from the captivated audience. Cinerama also showed rail footage as the cinema audience swayed in their seats.

Victorian Parlour Songs

Then came the craze for Victorian Parlour Room songs – mostly comic Irish songs like ‘Are You Right There, Michael, Are You Right?‘ or Joe Slater’s, 1906 hit, ‘Man in the Signal Box‘ and that hugely popular tear jerker ‘The Luggage Van Ahead’ as later adapted and popularised by Tex Morton. See tab: “Songs and Poems”

Country Music

This brings us to Country Music – the railway’s best musical friend.
Much of the early recordings of Australian country music featured train songs. On radio, especially the 1940s and early 50’s, the ‘live studio” singers were introduced with train sound effects.

Here is a list I prepared of pioneer country artists and their first train songs:

Tex Morton
Recordings Regal Zonophone 78s:

• On the Gundagai Line 1936
• The Railway Bum 1937
• Sergeant Small 1938 then banned as the notorious policeman took legal action – only a handful of discs were sold.
• Travel By Train 1939 (also original song)
• Freight Train Blues 1940
• In The luggage Van Ahead 1941

Rodeo 78s:

• Waiting for a Train 1949
• Wabash Cannonball 1949
• Railroad Boomer 1954

Buddy Williams
Recordings Regal Zonophone 78s:

• Wingie The Railway Cop 1941

Smilin’ Billy Blinkhorn
Recordings Regal Zonophone 78s:

• Wreck of the Old 97. 1939 (Can’t you take it back and get a boy?)

Slim Dusty
Recordings Regal Zonophone 78s

• Train Whistle Blues 1963

Later recordings included

• Last Train to Nowhere
• Album Glory Bound Train – gospel

Tim McNamara
Rodeo records

• Second song he recorded was Down By The Railroad Track

The country songs all had a relationship to our folk tradition because of the timeframe and how we used songs as popular entertainment. Tex wasn’t the only one who changed the words of American songs to suit the local lingo and environment.

Dance crazes continued to use train themes – J C Williamson’s ‘1920’s hit ‘Meet Me At The Station Down in Dixieland’ and the 1917 Tivoli Follies hit ‘All Aboard The Ragtime Train’.

Classical composers also romanticised train travel including Eugene Goosens, Percy Grainger and George Dreyfus. I could mention trains songs in jazz and the folk revival and, of course, the rockabilly, b5lues, western swing and a zillion other musical expressions as we caught the Chattangooga Choo Choo, The Rock Island Line, The Freight Train, The A Train, The Honky Tonk, The Peace Train, the Finicula and even Elvis on the Mystery Train. Our first big instrumental hit was the Joy Boys and Southern Aurora.

It was the ‘folk’ who gave us the real emotional link with rail because of the nature of traditional and anonymous song. They sang about navvies, train drivers competing as in Billy Sheahan, songs about union struggles, soldiers getting trains, swaggies hopping trains, songs about railway refreshment rooms and songs about the people who worked on the trains. These songs are still being written and still being sung.

As popular music developed the songs about the railway echoed popular music shifts including the Charleston, Blues, Dixieland Jazz, The Twist, Hucklebuck, Stomp etc

Popular Australian sheet music

For most of us our first contact with trains comes in childhood with lullabies and songs:

Engine, engine, number nine On its’ way to Clementine If the train comes off the track Will I get my money back? A peanut sat on a railway track Its heart was all a-flutter Around the corner came the 4.15 Bang! Crash! Peanut butter Polly on the railway road Picking up stones, Along came an engine And broke poor Polly’s bones Oh! Said Polly, ‘that’s not fair,’ ‘Poof!’ said the engine, I don’t care!” Down by the station Early in the morning See the little pufferbellies All in a row See the station master Turn the little handle Puff, puff, toot, toot Off we go! Down by the station Early in the morning See the little pufferbellies All in a row See the station master Turn the little handle Puff, puff, toot, toot Off we go!

If one was to identify the top 6 early childhood iconic toys I’m certain that Thomas The Tank Engine would be right up there with Winnie the Pooh, Bob the Builder, Postman Pat and maybe even Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.

The pioneer railways were also a product of their times. Britain, Ireland, America and some parts of Europe had already seen massive advancements in rail and despite our small population base we appeared determined to build railways. This most probably had a great deal to do with the size of the continent and the fact that the discovery of gold had seen the opening up of the outback. Cobb & Co, the celebrated coaching firm and the carrier of the Royal Mail on a grand scale, was also seen to be too slow and it was inevitable it would give way to the Iron Horse. A steam train did not depend on the temper of the horses or state of the road, and so could leave on time

Navvies

Navvies on the Sydney-Parramatta Line:

‘An old-timer likens the hardened navvies to the bushman stereotype:

“… I think I could say there was not a handsome looking fellow on the job; they were all shapes and sizes — to see them in their Sunday clothes they often seemed pathetic, almost misshapen. It was survival of the fittest; they were important while the job was in progress, but when the job was done they were lost . . .”The navvies’ clothing was as rough as their surroundings — they wore flannel shirts, dungaree trousers, felt hats and bowyangs. They slept in their shirts, and baths and showers were almost unheard of. ”At night some lay with the gins who sold their charms in the camp for two bob; others sought the company of prostitutes in town or near the camp.”

Navvy folklore reconstructs graphically the scene in the construction camps, and tells of the living conditions and food.

‘The songs of the navvies that have survived express resentment and dissatisfaction. The navvies toiled for forty-eight hours, and longer, for six days’ each week. Today, the navvies’ conditions would be considered industrially intolerable, but the old-times say that work was scarce; they had to accept bad conditions as they found, them — although at the time conditions may not have compared unfavourably with those of other bush workers, Many up-country navvies viewed industrial unrest with disdain.’

It came on to rain and it rained with a will The flood nearly covered the whole of Bexhill, Such a shifting of camps 1 ne’er saw before As we had on that railway the Tweed and Lismore laddie Fol de diddle lerp, la tero la lee.I then got a job with an axe in my hand, From lopping and chopping I scarcely could stand, My arms they were aching, my bones they were sore From working like blazes upon the Lismore. Fol de diddle 1ero, la lero, la lee.(above from Russel Ward manuscripts)

The navvies get a bad rap in some railway folklore. Sure, they were generally rough and tumble men who ‘worked hard and played harder’ – but they did the job. It was also a job that most Europeans wouldn’t do, for the English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish complexion was not used to the harsh cruel heat of the Australian sun. It was near-backbreaking work with the added disadvantage of flies, mosquitoes and snakes. Somehow the navvies sweated to axe the trees, shovel the dirt, lay the sleepers and then the tracking. They lived in tent camps with bore water and bare necessities, including regular fresh food. It was a lonely life and, for many, solace only came at the end of a bottle.

Knock off time for the navvy

Child looking out of train window sees some navvies “Look mommy, what are they?” “They’re navvies, dear.” “Geez. Don’t they look just like men!”

The bulk of early songs are about the navvies and their lifestyle. I mention that the majority of early railway workers were Europeans because the American railways relied heavily on Chinese labourers. We did not and the general attitude to Asians, and in fact any person of ‘colour’, was not welcoming. This was the period of ‘Australia for the white man’. Later on in history mainland Europeans, especially Maltese, Greeks and Yugoslavs joined the navvies. Indigenous workers also held jobs, especially in the northern states.

Federation anti-Asian cartoon

The White Australia Policy fuelled by fear

Navvy on the Line was a parody of the old Cuckoo’s Nest.

NAVVY ON THE LINE (Parody of The Cuckoo’s Nest) I’m a navvy, I’m a navvy, I’m a navvy on the line, I get four and twenty bob a week, Besides me overtime; All the ladies love the navvies, And the navvies love their fun. They’ll be lots of little navvies When the railway’s done. Some like the girls, who are pretty in the face, Others like the girls who are slim around the waist, But I like the girl, who’ll take it in her fist. And shove it right home into the magpie’s nest.   AND IN 2005 I LOCATED A ‘CLEAN’ VERSION, OBVIOUSLY A CHILDREN’S DITTY THAT RAN: I’M A NAVVY I’M A NAVVY WORKING ON THE LINE, FIVE & TWENTY BOB A WEEK, AND ALL THE OVERTIME. ROAST BEEF, BOILED BEEF, PUDDINGS MADE OF EGGS; UP JUMPS A NAVVY WITH A PAIR OF SAUSAGE LEGS (ANON. PUBLISHED IN AUSTRALIAN VOICES. PENGUIN, CIRCA 1960S)

And in 2005 I located a ‘clean’ version, obviously, a children’s ditty that ran:

It wasn’t just the Sydney to Parramatta Line that had trouble retaining navvies and in 2005 I located the following from an Adelaide newspaper, The Evening Star, dated 1879:

Cheer up, me lads, the navvies are on the spree The Company’s gone insolvent And the railway’s up a treeNOTE: ‘Up a tree’ is a colloquial expression for bankruptcy.

Railway Hotels and Stations

By 1890 there was a national web of small railways. If you were able to fly over Australia you would have seen railway navvy tent camps, partly built tracks, piles of sleepers and the Railway Hotels. It became apparent that the emerging federation would need a more organised, national and nationalised railway service.

THE RAILWAY HOTEL

The railway hotel plays an important place in Australia’s architectural heritage and folklore. Often these buildings dominated the main street that inevitably grew up around the train station. Many had distinctive awnings and emblazoned with the name ‘Railway Hotel’. It was at these hotels that travellers over-nighted, railway workers were sometimes lodged, commercial travellers used as a base, and the town gathered socially.

There are numerous songs, poems and yarns based on the railway hotel.

Railway Hotels accommodated, refreshed and fed travellers and locals and became the destination for social life.

The German like his beer
The Englishman his half and half
The Irishman likes his tot and
The Scotsman likes his hot
The Aussie has no national drink
So he drinks the bloody lot!

A man and his wife check into the Railway Hotel. The husband wants to have a drink at the bar but his wife is extremely tired so she decides to go on up to their room to rest. She lies down on the bed… just then, an elevated train passes by very close to the window and shakes the room so hard she’s thrown out of the bed.
Thinking, this must be a freak occurrence, she lies down once more.
Again a train shakes the room so violently she’s thrown to the floor.
Exasperated, she calls the front desk and asks for the manager.
The manager says , “I’ll be right up.”
The manager is sceptical but the wife insists the story is true.
“Look… lie here on the bed — you’ll be thrown right to the floor!”
So he lies down next to the wife.
Just then the husband walks in. “What do you think you’re doing!”, he says.
The manager calmly replies, “Would you believe I’m waiting for a train?”

As the railways developed there was a distinct feeling that it was one of the main ways to bring the often-squabbling colonies together. Here was the world’s largest island continent relying on the railway for transport and communication as if it were the life stream of the emerging nation.

Some pundits (or comedians) compared the size of America and Australia and showed railways in each country. It is also important to appreciate that the railways relied heavily on its labour force, especially manual labourers and for that reason it became one of the most important examples of labour organization. By the time of Federation it had Australia’s largest organised workforce and most powerful emerging unions.

Australian railways Union (ARU) cartoon with the various State branches holding hands and uniting Australia.

Railway stations are also an important part of our architectural heritage and, thankfully, some magnificent building still remain despite the enthusiasm of our past Governmental and greedy commercial vandals.

1880s rail workshop tunnel

Melbourne’s magnificent Flinders Street Station still stands proud.

One of the little explored aspects of rail history has been the links to our maritime industries. In the nineteenth century many railways linked the ports to the railway. The two following photographs show the tracking alongside the clippers.

Shiprail Hobson’s Bay 1878

Shiprail Sandridge, Victoria, 1880s.

Class and Jumping the Rattler

First and Second Class

In the latter half of the 19th century rail became an invaluable partner in the growth and development of our rural industries. It enabled wheat, rice, wool, meat and coal to be transported to the city and export markets. Most importantly, for industries like sheep, cane, agriculture and cattle, that relied on itinerant labourers, it transported the workers. These were the days of first and second-class passengers. The itinerant workers, of course, travelled second-class, promoting poets like Henry Lawson to write poems like his haunting ‘Second Class Wait Here’.

Jumping the Rattler

During the lean times, especially in the 1890s and 1930s, rail travel became the only other affordable option to ‘shank’s pony’ (the Australian colloquial expression for walking), however, some could not even afford the price of a ticket. Like American we had tramps (or bums) who ‘waltzing their matildas’ from town to town. They called it ‘jumping the rattler’ and since an out-of-work individual had to prove he or she had travelled a certain distance to be entitled to a ration card hand-out (cards were stamped by each issuing officer), the train provided a quick link to the next hand-out. Since many of the trains were goods trains, sometimes stock trains, the ride would have been both uncomfortable and smelly.

Me and me dog We travel the bush In weather cold and hot. Me an me dog We don’t give a stuff If we get any work or not. (swagman’s toast)

The railway employed ‘railway police’ who tried to clear the free travellers but they were never entirely successful being outnumbered thousands to one. Some were known for their officious nature. Sergeant Small, the subject of a song performed by the great Tex Morton in the late 1930s was such a man. See tab: “Songs and poems”

When the recording was released commercially Small instigated legal action and the song was removed from sale with an apology.

Robert ‘Tex’ Morton

BOB THE RAILWAY DOG In the 1890s the SA railways had their own dog. It was believed to be the pet of a deceased driver and it retained its nickname of bob the dog. A traveler had a special collar inscribed: ‘Stop me not but let me jog, I am Bob the driver’s dog’ Bob had a habit of jumping onto the footplates. (Quoted Patsy Adam Smith Outback Heroes)

1917 Railway Strike

1917 Railway Strike

In 1917 Australia experienced one of its worst-ever strikes. Once again the bitter conflict between worker and master erupted. The strike, which started in Sydney over what we would now refer to as a ‘time and motion study’, eventually spread right throughout the railway, then to allied unions and then interstate. At the height of the strike the railway requested Sydney schoolboys to assist as volunteer labour.

Join the Australian Railway Union

One of the songs that came out of the 1917 strike ridiculed the NSW State Railway for housing its scab labourers in temporary accommodation at Sydney’s Zoo (then at Moore Park). It was called The New Exhibit and is typical of early union songs – it’s a beauty. See tab: “Songs and poems”

Scenes from the Great Depression – Australia

WIFE IN MAN’S CLOTHES FOUND IN TRAIN. . . . . . . . . WITH HUSBAND UNDER SEAT.Before Magistrate Parker. The story of a young couple’s persistent misfortune was related.Horace Hardy, 20, and his wife, Ada Hardy, 19, were charged with travelling on the railway without tickets.They were found at Wagga, hiding under the seat of a carriage. The woman was dressed in man’s clothing and both were badly scared when discovered.Hardy informed the magistrate that he had spent his last penny on their tickets at Moss Vale. He had been out of work for some time, and wanted to get to Melbourne in order to look for work, which he couldn’t get in New South Wales.The pair had not been married long. Each was fined ten pounds and ordered to pay one pound eleven shillings and sixpence compensation, in default nine days imprisonment.(Published in The Railroad August 1928.

BEN CHIFLEY – from train driver to Prime Minister

“I should not be a Member of this Parliament today if some tolerance had been extended to the men who took part in the strike of 1917. All that harsh and oppressive treatment did as far as I was concerned was to transform me, with the assistance of my colleagues, from an ordinary engine driver into the Prime Minister of this country.”Ben Chifley

Train Names

Train names have become part of our folklore

One of our most famous trains was called ‘The Fish’ and, as is with folklore, the meaning was lost over time. Sometimes other meanings are circulated. The ‘Fish’ train was so-called because the driver’s name was Salmon, the fireman was Trout and guard Pike (Found in the manuscript papers of Cunningham Henderson (Born1864-1950)

• The Fish    – Blue Mountains
• The Chips     – Blue Mountains
• Indian Pacific    – trans continent
• The Ghan    – trans continent
• Spirit of Progress    – Syd/Melb
• Southern Aurora     – Syd Melb
• The Overland    – Melb/Adelaide
• Sunlander    – Northern run to Cairns
• Inlander    – Townsville to Mt Isa
• Westlander    – to Charleville
• Gulflander    – Normanton to Croydon in the Gulf Country
• Prospector    – to Kalgoorlie
• Australind    – to Bunbury
• Vinelander    – Victoria Mildura
• Silver City Comet    – Broken Hill (world’s first air conditioned train)
• The Heron –    Blue Mountains to Sydney
• Silver Slug    – Sydney to W’gong
• The Slogger    – Mt Victoria 6.09am to Sydney.

A Texan is bragging to an Australian on the train journey across the Nullabour.
“In Texas”, he drawls, “you can get on a train, ride all day long, and still be in Texas by nightfall”.
“Yeah,” replies the Englishman, “we have slow trains here too”.

Camels at Burke Railway Station

The Australian railways were built by men from all walks of life and all nations. The Afghans, with their camels, played a leading role and have been commemorated by the naming of the trans-continent train, The Ghan. It has been said there are more wild camels in the Australian outback than the entire Middle East.

For a history of the Mortuary Railway go to our main menu and search for ROOKWOOD.

Refreshment Rooms

Railway Refreshment Rooms

One of the most distinctive aspects of the early Australian railway was the culture of the Railway Refreshment Rooms – or ‘Triple R’ – as they were affectionately known. These establishments provided take away food and drink and also, in some venues, sit down meals.

Quality at the RRR depended on the staff and considering that some trains rolled into the station at 3am in the morning, would stop for 14 minutes as passengers ran, grabbed and guzzled and gulped, it was no wonder some of the staff had sour faces. The RRR staff, mostly women were amongst the earliest unionised.

The RRR’s most treasured secret was the ‘railway pie’. By the 1930s the railway kitchens in each State were producing millions of pies every year. They were all steak or steak and kidney and, from memory, they weren’t half bad. Some country RRR supplied their own local pies and at Werris Creek in 2005 I talked to some retired RRR women who all claimed that the Werris Creek pies were the best ever.

RRR waitress: what do yer want? Weary traveler: how about a cup of tea, a pie and a few kind words? Waitress: There’s yer tea. There’s yer pie. That’s two and sixpence. Weary traveler: what about the few kind words? Waitress: Don’t eat the pie!

Railway Refreshment Room Singleton Station, NSW.

2005 saw the opening of the Werris Creek Railway Museum and nearby Memorial to railway men and women who have died in wars. The old Railway Refreshment Room houses the museum and considering Werris Creek was the first purposely-built railway town, it is well worth exploring when next you visit the New England region. The station is well preserved and the local pies are still excellent!

Two excellent references in song to the refreshments on the railways are On the Queensland Railway Line and The Triple R. See tab: “Songs and poems”

Bottom image is a mail sorting room

Some of the early train carriages were extremely well fitted out with gas lighting, leather seats and carpet.

‘Strafing’ could mean struggle to get through the carriage. These are the old ticket snappers that have a history of their own and Johnson, the author of this ditty, often uses the word ” flapper” the 20’s expression for women, as in ‘chicks’.

The standard RRR joke was:

“What’s worse than finding a mouse in your railway pie?”
To which the answer inevitably came:
“Half a mouse!”

Passenger Rules

The delivery of mail and parcels was of major importance to country people. The Bulletin Magazine also travelled up country by train and was readily devoured by squatters and shearers and drovers alike.

The latrines on early trains were a thing of mystery for those used to ‘dunnies’ – the Australian outback toilet.

Sign: Passengers are requested to avoid, as far as possible, using the W.C. while the train is standing at the station. And . . . . . . .Passengers will refrain From passing water while the train is at the station If you feel you really oughta please call the railway porter (Quoted in Evening Star, Adelaide, 1879)

Typical railway toilet

See also the parody Please Refrain, set to the air, Humoresque. See tab: “Songs and poems”

“I was stationed in the bush in the 1950’s. The living quarters at the time was known as “tin city” consisting of rows of huts with several “ablutions blocks” scattered throughout. The ‘loos carried official signs saying  ‘Do not throw cigarette butts in urinal’. And signed ‘  by order.’

Upon returning from weekend leave we were all greatly amused to find that these signs had been replaced with equally official looking ones which read “Do not throw cigarette butts in urinal – as this makes them soggy and hard to light. And was signed , ‘By order.’
(sent to Warren Fahey 2005 via email) 

Railway Union

Rail Unions

logo of the RTBU

There were several unions involved with the early part of the railways history. Over the years they have been amalgamated – in solidarity there is strength – And for a long time the ARU was the dominant union. It is now known as the Rail, Tram & Bus Union.

This great old union poster is framed in the RTBU office in Sydney.

May Day

May Day is traditionally the annual celebration of unionism. This is following statement, complete with rhetoric, is typical of the ‘union speak’ of the time.

‘The coming May Day has a special significance to the Australian working class – it is not only the day of many great battles of the workers all over the world, but it means the opening of a new leaf in the history of the Australian working class. On the 1st of May the workers of Australia will be called upon to stop work, and demonstrate against capitalism, with its wage cuts, rationalisation etc to declare our solidarity with the oppressed workers of other countries. We must intensify the struggle from now until all forms of capitalistic exploitation are abolished.'(Quoted in The Railroad. Issue: April 1930)

The 1920s and 30s saw the emergence of several socialist labour groups and parties including the International Workers of the World and The International Socialists. These groups played a leading role in revolutionising industrial law in Australia. They also produced many songs and poems ‘for the cause’, such as The Scab’s Dream and the poems Who Owns What and Without a Card. See tab: “Songs and poems”


Journal note:
The poem (Without a Card) has special significance for railway workers in NSW for in no other calling is a similar state of affairs allowed to prevail. When working-class understanding is established, those who do not conform will meet a just fate.

The Railroad

This monthly Union newspaper appeared in several formats including title changes. The State Library holds issues from 1927-31.

These, of course, were extremely turbulent times with the position of labour continually under review and also under attack by capitalism and government both retaliating the forces of extreme left wind groups such as the IWW and Communist Party. Whilst it took on the usual business of a union newspaper it is interesting to see how wide the rail industries spanned. Even the Railway Refreshment Room staff conditions were addressed in every issue! It is hard to realise just how massive the rail industry was at this crucial time of Australia’s industrial growth – it affected so many sectors of manufacturing and service including the supply of rolling stock, timber, water, steel, bridges, leatherwork, coal, electricity, cleaning, mail service, lube and millions of nuts, screws and bolts! The other notable feature is the number of sporting and cultural groups affiliated with the various rail unions.

Sport was also covered – especially if the journalist could get a railway spin on the story.

Unusual Railway History

UNNATURAL HISTORY OF THE RAILWAY

The observations of ‘an Aussie’ – Werris Creek Engine Driver -15/1/1930

Engine drivers— Rare birds, dusky plumage. Generally useful. No song; but for a consideration will jump points, signals etc. Have been known to drink freely near the haunts of man — especially at isolated stations. Occasionally intermarry with station-master’s daughters (see station masters). Known colloquially by such names as “Hell Fire Jack,” “Mad Hector,” “Speedy Steve,” “Whaler,” “Smokebox,” and “Bashes”. Many poems have been written around the lives of these creatures: notably “The Runaway Train” and “How I drove the Express.” Great sports, often carried from their engines suffering from shock—caused by wrong information.

Cleaners — Very little is known regarding the habits of these animals. How the name originated still remains a mystery.

Guards —-Fairly common. Red faces. Can go a long time without water. Easily recognisable by their habit of strutting up and down. Shrill whistle, but no sense of time. Sleep between stations, hence common cry of “Up Guards, and at ’em.” Serve no generally useful purpose, but can be trained to move light perambulators, keep an eye on unescorted females, and wave small flags.

Porters -— Habits strangely variable. Sometimes seen in great numbers: sometimes not at all. Much attracted by small bright objects. No song, but have been known to hum — between trains. Naturally indolent, but will carry heavy weights if treated rightly (i.e. sufficiently). Natural enemies of passengers (which see). Treated with contempt by station-masters (which see)

Station Masters —Lordly- Brilliant plumage. Rarely leave their nests. Ardent sitters. Most naturalists state these birds have no song, but Railway Commissioners dispute this. Have been known to eat porters (which see). Female offspring occasionally intermarry with very fast Engine drivers. ‘

Repair Gangs— Plumage nondescript. Migratory in habit. Nests are conspicuous and usually found in clusters near railway lines. No song but passengers assert their plaintive echoing cry of “Pa-p-er” is unmistakable. ,

Passengers — Very common. Varied plumage. Will stand anything as a rule, but have been known to attack porters (which see). Often kept in captivity under deplorable conditions by ticket inspectors, guards etc. Will greedily and rapidly devour sandwiches and buns under certain (i.e. rotten) conditions. These-birds are harmless when properly treated, and should be encouraged by all nature lovers.

RAILWAY INSTITUTE

Established in 1891 after the retiring Commissioner for railways in NSW (1878-1888) gave his departure ‘honorarium’ of 500 pounds to the establishment of a ‘library’ for all rail workers. The Government matched the donation and the Institute building was established at Redfern, in Sydney. Rail workers were entitled to free membership, their sons could pay 5 shillings annually and classes were conducted for wives and daughters.

Sydney Railway Institute Building

Telegraphy Class

Women’s Gymnasium Class

Westinghouse Braking System Demonstration Room railway Institute

Mr Tom Cush

In 2005 I taped an oral history (for my collection at The National Library of Australia) with Mr Tom Cush who was the Executive Director of the NSW Railway Institute for ‘most of his working life.’ He was 94 years old and took great pride in the achievements of the RI as our first ‘technical college’.

Mr Cush had wonderful stories about railway life. He commented that the “fettlers always took immense pride and responsibility for their piece of line. They were the backbone of the early railway era and there backs were never broken.”

Shorthand classes at the R.I.

Railway Disasters

Whilst disasters like train crashes are obviously not funny, the folk have a habit of creating yarns and songs to commemorate such events. There is usually an appropriate lapse of time before they appear and, in some ways, these are a folklore mechanism to allow people to actually discuss the events, to confront the situation through music and humour. It is a pressure valve that allows them to continue.

Jim wanted a job as a signalman on the railways.
At the job interview the inspector asked him this question: “What would you do if you saw 2 trains heading for each other on the SAME track?

Jim said: “I would put all signals to danger”
“What if they were going too fast?”, asked the inspector.
Jim said,” I would switch the points for one of the trains.”
“What if the lever broke?”, asked the inspector.
“Then I’d dash down the signal box steps waving a red flag”, said Jim.
“What if it blew away in the wind?’ asked the inspector.
“Then…” Jim continued, “I’d run back into signal box & phone the next signal box.”
“What if the phone was engaged?”
“Well…..in that case,” persevered Jim, ” I’d rush down out of the box & use the PUBLIC emergency phone at the level of the crossing.”
“What would you do if THAT was vandalized?”
“Oh well, then I’d run into the village & get my Uncle Harry.”
This puzzled the Inspector, so he asked, “Why would you do that?”
“Because he’s never seen a train crash!!”

‘On Easter Monday, 20 April 1908, the 6.50pm ‘up’ Bendigo crashed into the rear of the 7.15pm ‘up’ Ballarat, which was standing at Sunshine station, seven miles from Melbourne. Both trains, crowed with holiday makers were running late. Forty-four passengers in the Ballarat train were killed and over 400 on both trains were injured. (From ‘Victorian Railways)

Songs referring to rail disasters include The Sunshine Railway Disaster (to the tune of If Those Lips Could Only Speak) and The Springwood Crash. See tab: “Songs and poems”

Timetables and Delays

The lonely signal box

If there is one subject sure to provoke discussion about today’s railway system, especially in New South Wales, it is the timetable and delays.
Folklore steps in with humour.

You know the train system is in chaos when the train you’re on grinds to a halt and you hear the following announcement:

“This train has been delayed because there is another train at the platform ahead at Central. We have no idea how long it will take.” And then, after a brief pause, the triumphant: “This train is now one hour and 28 minutes late”.

Still, as pointed out by an Inverell resident in a letter to the Editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, ‘Sydney residents have no right to whinge about a mere hour’s delay. The last train that left Inverell left 17 years ago!’

One enduring piece of international folklore, and certainly prevalent in Australian circulation, concerns the belief that Mussolini. the Italian fascist leader, ‘made the trains run on time.’ It is folklore and untrue.

Mussolini needed to convince the people of Italy that fascism was indeed a system that worked to their benefit. Thus was born the myth of fascist efficiency, with the train as its symbol. The word was spread that Mussolini had turned the dilapidated Italian railway system into one that was the envy of all Europe, featuring trains that were both dependable and punctual. In Mussolini’s Italy, all the trains ran on time. Truth is he was a murderer, thug and he did not make the trains run on time!

Early Australian trains ran late for a number of reasons

– floods, bushfires and derailment were among the main reasons.

• There was one train that was notorious for arriving late, having never arrived on time. However, on this occasion, the train arrived right on time. A bystander went up to the driver and congratulated him for being on time for once.
  The driver’s reply: “on time by foot, this is yesterday’s train.”
  
• .A nine month pregnant lady got off the train, and the SM said to her “You shouldn’t have been travelling in that condition” to which she replied: “I wasn’t when I joined this train”
  
• There is an urban legend which does the rounds every now and again about a typical small town which is woken up several mornings each week by an early train, usualy before 5am. The railway is said to cross the line twice within about half a mile, hence two rather loud blasts of the whistle. Having been woken up, the residents are often unable to get back to sleep. The town also has an unusually high birth rate.
  
• There are many versions of this story, but a lot of them say it was in a town in northern NSW. One story even claims the train was the “Kyogle Mail”.
  
• Another urban myth that does the circle line concerns a drunk who relieves himself on the tracks, and is electrocuted when his urine hits the third rail? “Electrocutions do happen,” concedes urban myth specialist. Blumenthal, “but usually to people working on the tracks or stumbling around on them. It’s unlikely that someone standing on the platform would hit the third rail.” Unless your aim is exceptional, the tracks are fairly safe for an illicit tinkle.
  
• A pair of classic subway yarns deal with mistaken identity. In one, a white lawyer is jostled by a black youth on a train. The attorney discovers his wallet is missing, follows the young man off the train and demands it back. The frightened thief forks it over and flees. When the triumphant yuppie calls his wife to tell her the news, she tells him that his wallet is on the dresser — he’s mugged an innocent man.
  
• Another tale features a commuter who sees a businessman leave the train without a pair of gloves that sit on the seat next to him. The good Samaritan rushes to catch the man as the train doors close, tossing the gloves after him. As the train pulls away from the station, a homeless man who was sharing the same row of seats with the executive demands to know why his gloves were tossed out of the car.
  
  Another old chestnut follows:
  
• There was one train that was notoriously unpunctual, having never arrived on time. However, on this occasion, the train arrived right on time. A bystander went up to the driver and congratulated him for being on time for once. The driver’s reply: “on time by foot, this is yesterday’s train.”
  The version of the above was in reference to the WAGR Kalgoorlie to Leonora train.
  
• A Texan is bragging to an Australian on a train journey through Queensland.
  “In Texas”, he drawls, “you can get on a train, ride all day long, and still be in Texas by nightfall”. “Yeah,” replies the Aussie, “we have slow trains here too”.
  
• “All around the water tank
  Waitin’ for a train
  I’m a thousand miles away from home
  Just a’standin’ in the rain.”
  I’m sittin’
  Drinkin’
  Waitin’
  Thinkin’
  Hope’in’ for a train.
  Anon. Published in Australian Voices. Penguin

More Folklore

• There was an Irishman, an Englishman and Claudia Schiffer sitting together in a railway carriage travelling through India. Suddenly the train went through a tunnel and as it was an old style train there were no lights in the carriages and it went completely dark. Then there was this kissing noise and the sound of a really loud slap. When the train came out of the tunnel, Claudia Schiffer and the Irishman were sitting as if nothing had happened and the Englishman had his hand against his face as he had been slapped there.
  The Englishman was thinking: “The Irish fella must have kissed Claudia Schiffer and she missed him and slapped me instead.”
  Claudia Schiffer was thinking: “The English fella must have tried to kiss me and actually kissed the Irishman and got slapped for it.”
  The Irishman was thinking: “This is great! The next time the train goes through a tunnel I’ll make another kissing noise and slap that English idiot again.”
  
• Three railway workers, an Australian, a Scotsman and a Frenchman, are all sitting down to lunch.
  The Australian says, “If I get another vegemite sandwich in my lunch, I’ll kill myself.”
  The Scotsman says, “If I get another slice of haggis in my lunch, I’ll kill myself.”
  The Frenchman says, “If I get another frogs-leg sandwich in my lunch, I’ll kill myself.”
  The next day, all three men get the same lunches, so they throw themselves in front of an oncoming train.
  At the funeral the Australian’s wife says, “If only I hadn’t packed a vegemite sandwich that day.”
  The Scotsman’s wife says, “If only I hadn’t packed a slice of haggis that day.”
  “Don’t look at me,” says the Frenchman’s wife. “He packed his own lunch.
  
• Bruce and Tom were a couple of drinking buddies, who worked as railway mechanics at Sydney’s Eveleigh Sheds. One day the Union called a Stop Work – so the two men were sitting around with nothing to do.
  Bruce said, “I wish we had something to drink”.
  Tom said, “Me too. You know I have heard you can diesel fuel and get a buzz. You want to try it?”
  So they poured themselves a couple of glasses of high-octane and got completely smashed. The next morning Bruce wakes up and is surprised at how good he feels. In fact he feels great. No hangovers!
  No bad side effects. Nothing!
  Then the phone rings…it’s Tom!
  Tom says “Hey, how do you feel this morning?”
  Bruce says, “I feel great, how about you?”
  Tom says, “I feel great, too. You don’t have a hang over?”
  Bruce says, “No, that train fuel is great stuff-no hangovers-nothing. We ought to do this more often.”
  “Yea, well there’s just one thing……”
  “What’s that?”
  “Have you farted yet?”
  “No.”
  “Well don’t, cause I’m in Adelaide.”
  
• A man and a woman were sitting beside each other in the first Class dining section of the train. The woman sneezed, took a tissue, gently wiped her nose and then shuddered quite violently in her seat. The man went back to his reading. A few minutes passed. The woman sneezed again, took a tissue, gently wiped her nose and shuddered quite violently in her seat. The man was becoming more and more curious about the shuddering. A few more minutes passed and the woman sneezed one more time. Again she took a tissue, gently wiped her nose and shuddered violently. The man had finally had all he could handle. He turned to the woman and said, “You’ve sneezed three times, you’ve taken a tissue and wiped your nose, then shuddered violently! Are you all right?” The woman replied, “I’m sorry if I disturbed you. I have a rare condition and when I sneeze, I have an orgasm.” The man was feeling a little embarrassed but even more curious and said, “I’ve never heard of that before. What are you taking for it?” The woman looked at him and said, “Pepper.”
  
• A lawyer gets on a train to go to Melbourne. He sits next to a poor farmer. To pass the time the lawyer decides to play a game with the farmer.
  “I will ask you a question and if you get it wrong, you have to pay me five dollars. Then you ask me a question, and if I get it wrong, you get fifty dollars. You ask me a question first.”
  The farmer thinks for a while.
  “I know”, he says, “what has three legs, takes 10 hours to climb up a palm tree, and 10 seconds to get back down?”
  The lawyer is confused and thinks long and hard about the question. Finally, the train is approaching Melbourne. As it pulls into the station, the lawyer takes out fifty dollars and gives it to the farmer.
  “I don’t know – What has 3 legs, takes 10 hours to get up a palm tree and 10 seconds to get back down?”
  The farmer takes the fifty dollars and puts it into his pocket. He then takes out five dollars and hands it to the lawyer and says:
  “I don’t know either

Miscellaneous Rail Lore

Factory, office and workshop life can get pretty tedious and the ‘folk’ create all manner of things to make working life more bearable.

Australians have always liked nicknames – describing people – affectionately or unfortunately – taking their inspiration from puns, in-jokes, sound alikes and other mechanisms. He’s some Eveleigh Railway Workshops nicknames from the past.

The undertaker – always sizing people up
Captain Sardine – he came from Norway
Alligator – always bites you for a loan
Barrister – spends most of his time at the bar
Singlets – was never off the worker’s backs
Judge – always sitting on a case Surgeon – a boss how was always out to knife some one
The Crane– Would lift anything not nailed down
Doug the Dog – used to call everyone Pal
Preserved peaches – always in the can

Two fettlers nicked off early from the job – the boss came down to ask ‘who’s missing?”
“Burke & Wills.” Came the dry reply.
“Okay” he says, “tell ’em they’re fired!”

The boss and his deputy were not the brightest men.
They were always referred to as ‘the close finish’
There was only a half head between them!

Two line workers were celebrating one of their birthdays.
Jack said “here’s a toast to long life for you – May you live to be 120 and three months.”
“So what’s the extra three months for?”
“Well, I wouldn’t like to see you die suddenly”

A bus station is where a bus stops.
A train station is where a train stops.
Many of us have a workstation….

Some post-Great Depression socialist wisdom.

THE OLD IRON HORSE

It does not take people long to forget favours. They have forgotten the days when the headlight of the locomotive was a star of hope; when it threw its first beams across the plains and the pioneer knew he was no longer alone.

The locomotive cut down the distance that separated him from his old home and his fellow men. It carried former joys to his door and gave him markets that doubled the value of his crops. It meant more companionship and increased value for his possessions. It delivered books to the children, seed for is fields, papers for long hard bush nights, and people to make a city within reach of his farms.

Now we forget, and to the pavements built with our money that the railways helped us to make, are used to drive our old benefactors to the wall.

The Railroad magazine 1939

HELL- ON THE TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILWAY

A trip through some of the outlying parts of Australia is invariably an eye opener in more ways than one. There is often beautiful scenary which the worker cannot enjoy too much, his mind being more taken up with the sordid details of his wage slave’s existence.

For instance, take the Transcontinental railway. Here and there along the railway line are little settlements mostly composed of railway workers. The huts that these workers live in are of the two-compartment shanty type or one room. At least, you can hardly call them rooms. In the hot summer sun (the temperature is 116 degrees in the shade) the workers and their wives suffer and stew, and the little children cry for a cool drink. Meanwhile, in the trans train, the toff-class enjoy themselves to the limit.

One day, while hawking toilet soap to make a crust, I called at the house of an aged woman. Piled high in the room were bags which were being sewn and repaired by this old working-class woman. Her eyes were bloodshot, and she said she earned but a few shillings per day.
Such is the existence of us toilers. J.D.

October 1928. The Railroad.

A stuttering sailor aboard the Shirley Ann who, just as the ship was getting out to sea, dashed up the bridge to the Captain. He was out of breath, and in a state of great excitement – stuttering and splattering and unable to get a word out.
The Captain, who knew the sailor well, shouted: “Sing it, man! Sing it!”

The sailor looked at him and began:
Should old acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind
The blooming cook fell overboard
And he’s half a mile behind.

Retired Rail and Tramwaymen. 1945

150th Anniversary of Rail

• 01 The Brocklebank Engineers
• 02 I Came Over From Ireland
• 03 The Night Express
• 04 Cant-hook and Wedges
• 05 On The Queensland Railway Lines
• 06 The Sunshine Disaster
• 07 The Ten Penny Bit – Frost is All Over
• 08 Billy Sheehan
• 09 Only One More Drink
• 10 The Dying Fettler
• 11 The Shooting of The Crow
• 12 The Trumpet – Ned’s Favourite
• 13 The Sandy Hollow Line
• 14 Navvy on the Line
• 15 The Woy Woy Workers’ Train

From the 1972 album featuring Tony Suttor, Liora Claff, Ned Alexander, Paddy Mclaughlan, Jack Fallis and Warren Fahey

From smoking steam locomotives to silver bullet trains the railway has played a vital role in the transport history of our country. It moved sheep, wool, cattle, coal, depression workers, soldiers, commuters, and it moved our hearts with song, poems, yarns and memories.

Songs and Poems

AN INCIDENT THAT HAPPENED YEARS AGO IN GOULBURN YARD

A Sub-Inspector was starting his Motor tricycle when he accidentally slipped and fell. Letting the motor career down South. The Signalman, seeing the riderless machine coming, opened his gates, and rang Mrs. Beck at the next gate, so the machine would not be damaged. After going about two and a half miles it left the road and was found ploughing into the ballast. So I then composed:—

I started on my journey, out from Goulburn yard.
To mount my motor tricycle, I found it rather hard.
For I. am such a Georgie Porgie, I am as long as I am round.
I somehow missed my footing, and landed upon the ground.

Away went the motor, with all its mighty power.
Until it left the road, beyond the lofty tower.
Two sets of gates were opened, as she passed along the line.
Over Braidwood road and Munday Street, and up that long incline.

Now if she had not left the road, I wonder where she’d go;
Home to Queanbeyan, or would she stop at Tarago.
I once was on a motor, and had a good fly round;
But was never so unfortunate, as to leave and strike the ground.

My advice to you in future, get on before you start;
Sit up brave and sturdy, and ride with a good-heart.
For there’s nothing in a risk, if you do it for a Pound;
To let your motor run away, and fall upon the ground.
.
BILL COBNFOBD, Goulburn. From Retired Rail & Tramwayman 1946 Oct.

AN OLD INVENTION

The following appeared alongside an advertisement for the Anti Prohibition and Teetotalism Association

I’m very fond of water
I drink it noon and night
No mother’s son or daughter
Hath known more delight!
But I forgot to mention,
‘Tis best to be sincere –
I use an old invention,
That turns it into beer.

THE BALLAD OF JERVIS BAY

Dunn Browning. Granville NSW

Screened from the light of day
On board the Jervis Bay
Forlornly stowed away,
Eight workless men

Sniffling the savoury stew
Served to the hungry crew
They feeling peckish too.
O’er the ship wandered

“Send out a warship quick!”
Back flashed the message slick,
Were the editors ‘shick’?
How the press thundered.

“Trot out the hoary lies,
Dressed up in new disguise,
This ought to bulge their eyes –
Make it a wonder.”

“See that the Bolshie shrinks”
Each scribbler nods and winks,
Working them up (between drinks)
Fables and slanders.

Oh! The wild charge they made,
On huge headlines displayed,
Even while bosses sprayed
Eight stowaways

How can the story die,
Tell how they trick and lie,
Up to the cloudy sky
Trusting subscribers.

CENTRAL STATION

Winifred G Birkett

And now we part not with fond, lingering feet
Pathetic on the understanding sod;
Not with eyes turning on the way we trod,
Or last, slow word to make it faintly sweet,
But in the meantime nightmare of this place
Your very hand meets mine abstractly;
Through hateful surges of humanity
My eyes must vainly seek to read your face.
I hear you talk of luggage, fares, and tips;
Share with a porter priceless shreds of time,
Trapped in this harsh and careless pantomime
And thinking only of your curving lips….
The train slides out, and so I see you speed,
Smiling uncertainly behind a stranger’s head.

The Railway Issue 1929

CRAUSER BAILEY

This printed version of what we now know as ‘Cosher Bailey’ is interesting because, as the article points out: ‘An old Welsh railway song much in vogue in those days when railway engines were new and fearsome things, and when the man who drove them was a man of mark.’`

Crauser Bailey had an engine
A puffin’ and a blowin’
When she come into the station
She would frighten all the nation.

Crauser Bailey he has been
Up to London to see the Queen
She would give him bread and jam,
And he would say – “Thank you, mam.”

Was you ever see?
Was you ever see?
Was you ever see
Such a sight before?

Newspaper Cuttings. Vol 107. Mitchell Q339.5 circa 1860

The passing of the steam era in the mid 20th century was a sad occasional for most train fanciers. Gone were the whistles, jets of steam, distinctive coal smell and gone too were some of the engineering marvels of the 19th century.

EPITAPH TO A STEAM ENGINE

[Source: Singleton Cemetery]

My engine now is cold and still
No water does my boiler fill
My coke affords its flame no more
My days of usefulness are over
My wheels deny their want of speed
No more my guiding hand they need
My whistle too has lost its tone
Its shrill and shrilling sounds are gone
My valves are now thrown open wide
My flanges all refuse to guide
My clocks although once so strong
Refuse their aid in the busy throng
No more I feel each urging breath
My steam is all condensed to death
Life’s railway over each station past
In death I’m stripped and rest at last
Farewell dear friends and cease to weep
In Christ I’m safe – in him I sleep

MRS. POTTS POINT

“While waiting at the Labour Exchange tor a ticket or rations, a man, aged ’53, collapsed, and was taken to Sydney Hospital, where he was found to be suffering from the effects of starvation.—. News Item;

Mrs. Potts Point has very decided opinions regarding such vulgar happenings, and. appears to have discovered a solution of the problem of how not to be ‘bothered by the “lower orders”;—

The lady threw the paper down with – angry exclamation,
“They make me cross,” she told her lord, “these stories of starvation. –
They have no right to publish them— such rude and vulgar nonsense—
It is a disgrace they should print this kind of correspondence.”

She leaned back in her easy chair to pet her pampered poodle,
And murmured fond endearments, such as “Mummy’s ‘Ickle Toodles!”—
Then gave the dear a dainty cake, and, while its bow adjusting,
Expressed the view that working- folk were “utterly disgusting.”

“Why can’t they go away and starve,” she asked in indignation,
‘Instead of falling in the streets and causing consternation?
The papers ought to cater tor Society’s enjoyment—-
Our dinners, dances, parties, bridge—not harp on unemployment.”

“Quite right, my dear!” her fond lord said. “The lower orders really are
Obtaining undue prominence-.ahem! — oh, very much, by far!
It is of quite no consequence that common people should be starved
When we, go much superior, discover dividends are halved.”

“Why don’t you let them all die out?” all eagerly his wife exclaimed.
“They’re always causing trouble, dear; it seems they’ll never be reclaimed.
The motorcar displaced the horse—these people spoil the scenery—
Let them all starve to death, and then replace them with machinery!”

The Railroad 1928

The following song is attributed to ‘Johnson 28’ who also illustrated it.

MUCKING OUT BRIGADE

I have seen them often standing,
In ill-fitting dungarees,
With their kerosene tin buckets,
Looking cold and ill at ease,
On a dirty train they’re dwelling
Just the daily ‘clean up raid’
Armed with tins and brooms and chammies –
That’s the mucking out brigade.

Some will sweep, while others polish,
Some will hose the windows clean,
Others changing towels and bottles,
Searchers grabbing magazines,
Then a loud-voiced leading porter,
With a chargeman, see the braid?
Pass along and view the working
Of the mucking out brigade

Pull that carpet out and sweep it!
See the leading porter frown?
Well, those windows aren’t too clever,
Get your hose and wash ’em down.
Hear that red-faced porter shouting,
Hey! That mat ain’t properly laid!
And he shows them how they do it,
In the mucking out brigade.

I have done my bit of mucking,
In those baggy dungarees,
I have scrubbed and rubbed and polished
On a floor with aching knees;
It is not all beer and skittles,
And as long as trains are made,
There’ll be work with broom and bucket
For the mucking out brigade.

The Railroad 1929

NAVVY ON THE LINE

(Parody of The Cuckoo’s Nest)

I’m a navvy, I’m a navvy,
I’m a navvy on the line,
I get four and twenty bob a week,
Besides me overtime;
All the ladies love the navvies,
And the navvies love their fun.
They’ll be lots of little navvies
When the railway’s done.

Some like the girls, who are pretty in the face,
Others like the girls who are slim around the waist,
But I like the girl, who’ll take it in her fist.
And shove it right home into the magpie’s nest.

AND IN 2005 I LOCATED A ‘CLEAN’ VERSION, OBVIOUSLY A CHILDREN’S DITTY THAT RAN:

I’M A NAVVY
I’M A NAVVY
WORKING ON THE LINE,
FIVE & TWENTY BOB A WEEK,
AND ALL THE OVERTIME.
ROAST BEEF, BOILED BEEF,
PUDDINGS MADE OF EGGS;
UP JUMPS A NAVVY
WITH A PAIR OF SAUSAGE LEGS(ANON. PUBLISHED IN AUSTRALIAN VOICES. PENGUIN, CIRCA 1960S)

NICE GIRL

Jack Callaghan (coll WL) 1970 and published in Australian Tradition

When first set eyes upon her, how she took my breath away
Her tall and graceful figure, that gentle body sway.
My pulses were vibrating, only her my eyes could see,
And although she did not know it, she had captivated me.

So I asked the boys about her for I knew they knew her well
And I was left aghast dumbfounded at the tales they had to tell
I scarcely could believe it though I knew such things were true
That such dainty looking females could behave the way they do.

For they said she was a fast bitch, she was hungry, hot and rough,
That you had to fuss around her or the bitch would take the huff
She was getting men in trouble every time they took her out,
Cause she needed certain treatment, beyond the shadow of all doubt.

They said that when you were aboard her you would find her really tough
That although you’d do your damn’dest you could not shove it in enough
It was in and out eternal, she was always wanting more,
And she’d go to bits completely if you gave her one behind the door).

And although she looked so dainty and so charming and so clean,
It would seem that she was’ careless with her toilet and hygiene;
For I learned amid amazement, and I found out all about
How her snifter’s blocked and dirty, but she oft needs raking out .

Disgustedly I listened of her morals low and base
How her squirt was always leaking how she’d blow off in your face
That her horn stays were terrific, what a bitch she was to slip
And to crown it her discharger was completely up the shit

And it seemed she was a boozer from the way these fellows spoke
For they said, “If you can keep her pot full, you will find her okey doke
They kept on criticising and it did seem strange to me
For I was just the Loco clerk, and she was Avon P.

(P. = Big P Class Engines)

NUMBER TWENTY-TWO

Air:—”The Babies on our ‘Block.”

If you talk of locomotives, and would like to know the star,
Then step up here on the footplate for a trip to Waratah.
For I drive the finest engine—I can prove the statement true,
They have neither man or engine equals me and Twenty-two.

There’s the four-wheel coupled Fairbairns, Numbers One, and Two, and Three,
They’re as fleet as Flying Dutchmen, but they’re wake as any flea;
Built for speed and strength, and staming, and likewise for running true,
There’s a happy combination in old Number Twenty-two.

Chorus
Look at Billy Martin when he’s running late,
A-ripping, and Or-whipping, Doctor is his mate;
Drive, Billy, drive, tut no matter what you do,
You couldn’t hold a candle to old Number Twenty-two.

There’s Four, Five, Six, and Seven, Number Eight and Number Nine,
They could all hook on behind me, and I’d tow them up the line;
Ten, Eleven, Twelve, and Thirteen—I can only name a few—
And I’ll gladly do without them if they’ll give me Twenty-two.

There ‘s the Thirties and the Forties, they are Beyer and Paycock ‘s make,
They are easy on the lever, and they’re handy with the brake,
With improvements and inventions, and with everything that’s new;
But the bully engine of them all is Number Twenty-two.

Chorus—What’s the use of Norman bothering his poll,
A-sighing, and a-crying, about his oil and coal;
– Drive, Freddy, drive, no matter what you do,
For economising fuel you can’t beat old Twenty-two.

There’s the bogies, Beyer and Paycock’s, and some more by Dubs supplied,
And the new Mogul goods engines, with their cylinders outside,
With their air brakes, and their stame brakes, but give me the good old screw,
I can pull up in a jiffy when I ‘m driving Twenty-two.

There’s Bill Gould, and Jack McNulty, and there’s Sam and Billy Brown,
Sure they blow about their Moonbies, and the gradients up and down,
There’s Mat Cockburn, Pearce, and Saxon, and the Murrurundi crew,
But they all play second fiddles when I’m there with Twenty-two.

Chorus—Take a trip with Wrightson, Number Thirty-eight,
Always on the knocker, not a moment late;
Drive, Geordie, drive, no matter what you, do,
The darling of the Northern Line is Number Twenty-two.

There’s Bill Nale, and Tom, his brother, Harry Wallace, and old Nat,
Mathews, Sanderson, and Blundell, Stewart, King, and Billy Pratt,
Oh, they skite about their sheep trains, and the work they have to do,
But I’d pull their loads and engines with old Number Twenty-two.

There’s Fred Bracey, Dug, and Dedman, Brudder Tom and Brudder Dick.
Sure they talk of Mickey Reynolds till they’d make a pig get sick;
Of expansion and combustion they can prate till all is blue,
But when they want rale science, they must come to Twenty-two.

Chorus:—Cabby runs to Maitland—little Seventeen—
A-dancing, and a-prancing, like a ballet queen,
Drive, Cabby, drive, but no matter what you do,
You know you couldn’t fut it with old Number Twenty-two.

There’s Jim Massey, and Jack Howden, Johnny Boyd and Harry Bell,
There’s the coal men, and the goodsmen—half their names I couldn’t tell;
But if you want a driver that is sure to pull you through.
Just ask for Thomas Plunkett, and old Number Twenty-two.

I can work the staff and ticket, and keep time with any train,
I can pull the best amongst them, and I tell you once again
You may search the Northern Railway, you may search it through, and through,
And the divil blast the engine equals Number Twenty-two.

Chorus—Look at Billy Martin-—Doctor looking sour—
A-ripping, and a-slipping, sixty miles an hour,
Drive, Billy, drive, but no matter what you do
You know its ” Faugh-a-ballagh” when I’m out with Twenty-two.

Murrurundi, 1880. JAVEY.

ON THE QUEENSLAND RAILWAY LINE

On the Queensland railway lines
There are stations where one dines
Private individuals
Also run refreshment rooms

CHORUS

Bogan-Tungan, Rollingstone,.
Mungar, Murton, Marathone,
Guthalungra, Pinkenba,
Wanko, Yaamba, – ha, ha, ha!

Males and females, high and dry,
Hang around at Durikai,
Boora-Mugga, Djarawong,
Giligulul, Wonglepong.

Pies and coffee, baths and showers
Are supplied at Charters Towers;
At Mackay the rule prevails
Of restricting showers to males.

Iron rations come in handy,
On the way to Dirranbandi,
Passengers have died of hunger
During halts at Garradunga,

Let us toast, before we part,
Those who travel, stout of heart,
Drunk or sober, rain or shine,
On a Queensland railway line.

PLEASE REFRAIN
(Air) Humoresque

Passengers will please refrain
From using toilets while the train
Is standing at the station for a while –
We believe in constipation
While the train is at the station –
Passengers, please hold it for a while.

Bladders extended,
Bowels torn and rend’ed,
Will keep our stations nice and free from sickly smell.

Kidneys all aching,
Shit already caking,
Must be borne or stations will become a living hell

Though it dribbles down your legs, you must resist temptations;
Though it stains your underpants, remember – Not at stations!

Though your clothing starts to smell.
Hear the plaintive pleading,
You must not think about relief,
Although your piles are bleeding,
Passengers will please refrain
From using toilets while the train
Is standing at the station for a while

POOR PADDY WORKS ON THE RAILWAY

In eighteen hundred and fifty-one,
I did what many men had done,
Oh, me dungaree breeches I put on,Chorus: To work upon the railway, the railway.
      I’m weary of the railway.
      Oh, poor Paddy works on the railway.

In eighteen hundred and fifty-two,
I had some work that I must do,
So I shipped away wid’ an Irish crew,In eighteen hundred and fifty-three,
I packed my gear and went to sea,
I shipped away to Syd-en-eeIn eighteen hundred and fifty-four,
I landed on Australia’s shore,
I had a pick-axe an’ nothing more,In eighteen hundred and fifty-six,
Me drinks I could no longer mix,
So I changed me trade to carrying bricks,In eighteen hundred and fifty-seven,
Me children numbered jist eleven,
Of girls I’d four an’ boys I’d seven,
 
In eighteen hundred and fifty-eight
I made a fortune, not too late,
An’ shipped away on the Frances Drake.

(Poor Paddy on the Railway: localized by Warren Fahey 2005)

THE SATURDAY NIGHT HORROR

By ‘digger’ in The Railway Issue 1929

Talk about your rough trains
That bump you till your sore,
There is none that can compare
With number one two-four.

She starts with South Grafton at .4.45
Along the track she picks up to the length of 55
With a rickety compo brake-van

That shakes you off your feet.
Some in use for 50 years,
And now are obsolete.

When rolling down the Red Hill
At a fair dinkum pace, with lefty on the footplate,
It’s like an aerial race.

You hang on to your hand-lamp
Until your fingers pain,
And try to write your journal
To the rocking of the train.

I have worked the Mountain pick-up
To Bathurst over the plains,
From the South on to the Border
In sunshine and in rain.

I have travelled many troop trains
While serving at the war,
But the roughest of them all
Is surely one two-four.

SECOND CLASS WAIT HERE

At suburban railway stations—you may see them as you pass—
there are signboards on the platform saying “Wait here second class,”
And to me the whirr and thunder and the cluck of running-gear
Seem to be forever saying “Second class wait here—
Wait here second class
Second class wait here.”
Seem to be forever saying, “Second class wait here.”

Yes, the second class were waiting in the days of serf and prince,
And the second class are waiting—they’ve been waiting ever since,
There are gardens in the background, and the line is bare and drear,
Yet they wait beneath a signboard, sneering “Second class wait here.”

I have waited oft in winter, in the mornings dark and damp,
When the asphalt platform glistened underneath the lonely lamp,
Glistened on the brick-faced cutting “Sellum’s Soap” and “Blower’s Beer,”
Glistened on enamelled signboards with their “Second class wait here.”

And the others seemed like burglars, slouched and muffled to the throats,
Standing round apart and silent in their shoddy overcoats;
And the wind among the poplars, and the wires that thread the air,
Seemed to be forever snarling, snarling “Second class wait there.”
Out beyond a further suburb, ‘neath a chimney-stack alone
Lay the works of Grinder Brothers, with a platform of their own;
And I waited there and suffered, waited there for many a day,
Slaved beneath a phantom signboard, telling all my hopes to stay.

Ah! a man must feel revengeful for a boyhood such as mine.
God! I hate the very houses near the workshop by the line;
And the smell of railway stations, and the roar of running gear,
And the scornful-seeming signboards, saying “Second class wait here.”

There’s a train, with Death for driver, that is ever going past;
There will be no class compartments when it’s “all aboard” at last
For the long white jasper platform with an Eden in the rear
And there won’t be any signboards, saying “Second class wait here”

Sergeant Small

[performed by the great Tex Morton in the late 1930s]

I went broke in Western Queensland in 1931,
Nobody would employ me so my swaggie days begun.
I headed out through Charleville to the western towns,
I was on my way to Roma, destination Darling Downs.
Hey my pants were getting ragged, my shoes were getting thin,
And when we stopped at Mitchell, a goods train shunted in,
The engine blew her whistle, I was looking I could see,
She was on her way to Roma, that was very plain to me.
And I wish that I was 16 stone and only 7 foot tall,
I’d go back to Western Queensland and beat up Sergeant Small.
Well as I sat and watched her, inspiration seemed to grow,
And I remember the Government slogan,
“It’s the railway that you own.”
So by this time the sun was setting and night was growing nigh,
So I gathered my belongings and I caught her on the fly.
And as we came into Roma, I kept my head down low,
I heard a voice say “any room mate” and I answered “plenty ‘bro’!”
Then out there stepped this noble man, the voice of Sergeant Small,
He said I’ve trapped you very nicely, you’re headed for a fall.
And I wish that I was 16 stone and only 7 foot tall,
I’d go back to Western Queensland and beat up Sergeant Small.
The judge was very kind to me, he gave me 30 days,
He said maybe that would help to cure my rattler jumping ways.
So if you’re down and outback let me tell you what I think,
Just stay off the Queensland railway, it’s a short cut to the clink.
And I wish that I was 16 stone and only 7 foot tall,
I’d go back to Western Queensland and beat up Sergeant Small,
I’d go back to Western Queensland and beat up Sergeant Small.

When the recording was released commercially Small instigated legal action and the song was removed from sale with an apology.

SONG OF THE FETTLER

‘Old 17’ is whistling
As she rushes through the night,
With head and tail lights gleaming,
and every car alight.
But as hse takes the cutting,
And holds the shining track,
From lusty throats come calling
The song of the man – Outback.

On cold and lonely stretches,
On bridges, tall and long,
You hear the cry of “Paper!”….
The fettler’s only song.
Then as you roll and fling them,
Just watch the eager pack
That rush like boys to grip them –
For they are scarce – Outback.

In scorching sun and blinding dust,
In snow and sleet and hail,
These men the track are keeping
For the passing of the mail.
Then after grub it’s paper time,
And every tent and shack
Is going through the latest
By a light of a lamp – Outback.

 With oil lamp dimly casting
A light on earthen floor,
When canvas walls go swaying,
As the winds through the gumtrees roar,
Those papers …every letter,
Are read – from front to back –
Then passed along to cobbers;
That’s the way of these men – Outback.

But when the storm clouds gather,
And rain comes for a week,
The ganger roars at midnight,
“Come on boys! Down the creek!”
Out then, in gleaming oilskins,
They go along the track,
With jacks and picks and crowbars –
There’s a washaway on – Outback.

So now you know just what it’s like
To work on the line out there.
Where every man’s a toiler,
where very man does his share.
Next time you hear them calling,
Don’t pass the waiting pack,
Give out the news from Sydney,
It’s a lot to these men – Outback.

[The Railroad 1928]

SONG OF THE TRAM DRIVER

(Tune: ‘Tramp, Tramp, Tramp)

As we speed upon our way,
With our motors puffing gay,
We cheerily and deftly glide along;
And. we clear the course, you bet,
For we make the people “get,”
While this is still the burden of their song :—

Chorus: Tram, tram, tram the cars are coming;
Shriek, puff, jingle through the street;
And the motto, ‘ Save who can,’ yells each bold equestri-an,
Each cart or carriage-driver that they meet.

When we make our whistle screech,
Folks for mercy may beseech,
As with speed of Derby-winners off they go ,
For their steeds we stimulate
To a pace would win a Plate,
And our metal fires the slowest of the slow! .

Chorus: Tram, tram, tram. etc

Now the circuses must fail
To draw box-ites or canaille—
They never can our gratis show surpass;
Every sawdust ‘daring feat’
Is outrivalled in the street;
While to watch the riders antics beats a farce !

How our lungs we do exert
When we tumble in the dirt
Some fat old party climbing on a car ;
As he sprawls upon his back
Sure ’tis merry sport, good lack!
‘Which our lively sense of humour cannot mar.

Folks may growl about the dust,
But then stir it up we must;
Whilst from smoke-stacks showers of burning ashes fly ;
How it makes a fellow prance,
An impromptu ‘ break-down’ dance,
When he gets a fiery cinder in the eye!

Chorus: Tram, tram, tram. etc

Those who want to save their time
Don’t admit our speed is prime ;
But of elegance and ease in praise we talk;
Time is made but for a slave,
So if that you want to save,
Why, hail the nearest omnibus, or—walk !

Chorus : Tram, tram, tram, etc

Our passengers we squeeze,
Little reckoning for their ease,
As we jam them helter-skelter, great and small;
Those who cannot sit may stand;
And tho’ amusement waxes grand
When with sudden jerk we cause a headlong sprawl!

Chorus: Tram, tram, tram etc.

Sometimes—’tis true, alas !
And grim death, with scythe and hour-glass takes a hand;
With the ‘Crowner’ and his ‘quest,
O’er the victim sent to rest
By this fiery Demon shrieking o’er the land !

Chorus: Than Tram, Tram, Tram,
Shriek, puff, jingle through the street,
And the motto, “Save who can”, yells each bold equestrian,
Each cart or carriage-driver that they meet!

Source: THE ARMCHAIR MAGAZINE Published Melbourne and also appears as Armchair Chronicle 1853

SHUNTING’S A JOY

By Leonard Sedden in The Railway Issue 1929

Two engines standing at the board,
The branch was on the main,
Our foreman’s voice in anger roared
Through the pelting rain.

Main-readers coming by the score,
Whistles pop together,
Another branch with fifty more,
I knew they’d like the weather.

I love my job, and so do you.
Who said I am a liar?
As for trying something new,
I’d sooner die by fire.

And yet some critics always say,
By the beard of Moses,
A shunter’s life is all sweet hay,
And a bed of roses.

Perhaps they’d like to shunt one nest,
We’ll gladly let ’em try,
And when they’ve done their very best,
Regard with a milder eye.

Let them come in summer time,
And don our service trousers;
They’d put their feelings into rhyme,
Ceasing to be wowsers.

Then again our oilskin coats,
Things of joy and gladness,
Enough to make one eat more groats
To minimise the sadness.

Our pretty hat give them to wear,
A sign of our prosperity,
Such beauty is so scarce and rare
It causes much hilarity

I sigh for their cupidity,
And beautiful oration,
Forgiving their stupidity
Although of long duration.

It’s nice to see your friends come home,
Then go seeking pleasure,
While you and I to work must roam.
For us there is no leisure.

THE SPRINGWOOD CRASH

by Frank Brown in The Retired Rail & Tramwaymen 1933

The train steamed out of Lithgow,
With its good and trusty crew;
The driver, perhaps you know him,
Engine Eleven-Twenty-two.

They ran O.K. to Wentworth Falls
With the usual care and tact,
But when approaching Lawson r
The brakes refused to act.

Now how this really happened
None of us can say;
We only know one thing,
That the train just ran away.

Through Hazelbrook and Woodford
They went on their mad career;
They thought of their wives and children,
And their hearts were filled with fear.

The roar as they passed Linden
Was enough to waken the dead;
The whistle blowing loudly,
Giving warning on ahead.

Down past old Weemalah.
She was gone beyond control;
Imagine how she hit that curve
Down near the water-hole.

And their engine fell to pieces
As along the road she flew;
She lost her springs and slide bars,
And the pistons broke in two.

No one can imagine
The awful nervous strain
Or the agonising thoughts
Of the men who worked this train.

Even the prisoner in his cell,
Awaiting the hangman’s rope,
Right to the last sad moment
Has one little ray of hope.

But these three men were flying
Solely in God’s Power,
To what they thought was certain death,
At eighty miles an hour.

That slight up-grade at Faulconbridge,
They passed it like a flash;
They left the road at Springwood.
Then came an awful crash.

A thousand tons of loaded trucks,
Cement flying just like snow;
And how these men escaped from death,
Well. God alone must know.

But there’s nothing so bad that it couldn’t be worse,
Is a saying old and true;
Had they only gone another mile
They would have crashed into 32.

We give praise to those heroes
Who repelled our enemy hosts.
But I lift my hat to these three men,
Who stuck so gamely to their posts.

THE SUNSHINE RAILWAY DISASTER

Tune: If Those Lips Could Only Speak
Recorded in 1974 by Warren Fahey from Mrs Peg Collins, Perth.

If those trains had only run
As they should, their proper time,
There wouldn’t have been a disaster
At a place they call Sunshine.
If those brakes had only held
As they did a few hours before
There wouldn’t have been a disaster
And a death-roll of forty-four.

The doctors and nurses arrived there
And the sight it caused them pain
To see all the wounded and dying
In the wreck of that fateful train.
The people of Sunshine ne’er faltered,
But assisted with all their power
To help the doctors and nurses
In that awful painful hour.

He was driving a Bendigo engine,
The train was running all right.
It was going along as usual,
Till Sunshine came in sight.
He put on his brakes and he whistled,
For the signal was against the train;
He applied his brakes for emergency,
But alas! It was all in vain.

CHORUS:
If those brakes had only gripped,
As they did a while before,
There would be no Sunshine disaster
Or deaths numbering forty-four.
If that guard had only seen,
That danger lay ahead,
There would be no widows or orphans
But happier homes instead.

THE LONELY FETTLERS

” A song for our horny-handed mates who used to lash out the sleepers and rails off the ballast trains in record time, regardless of the weather. I have the utmost respect for the old gangers and their men, and certainly without them our railways would have stood still.

We’re just three lonely fettlers located right out West,
Midst heat and sand and desert we try to do our best;
Each morn at six you see us with shovels, bar and jack,
All day long through heat and dust, we toil along the track.Our camp is on a sandhill, there’s nare a soul to meet,
‘Cept for a weary swagman who wandered off his beat;
Just twice a week arrives a train with our supplies,
Just old corn beef and taters, some bread, and jam and flies.You’ve got the lot the guard says, then gives the rightaway,
That train’s our only visitor till our next ration day;
So listen all you fettlers who’ve never been outside the old suburban,Any day – come pop along our outback way,You’ll get a family greeting, be sure you will not rust,
For water is so very scarce, you’ll eat your pound of dust;
Just keep your courage growing and keep your chin well up,
Then life will be worth living, for full will be your cup.(By Railwayman Jim Gordon. The Retired Rail and Tramwayman magazine April 1940)

THE LUGGAGE VAN AHEAD

[Victorian parlour song adapted and popularised by Tex Morton]

On the midnight express as the train rattled on
All the passengers had gone to bed
All save one young man with a babe on his knee
Who sat there with a bowed down head

One commenced crying just then
as though it’s poor heart would break
When an angry man said make that child stop it’s noise
It’s keeping us all a-wake
Put it out said another don’t keep it in here
We’ve paid for our berths and want rest

But never a word said the man with the child
As he fondled it close to his chest
Oh where is it’s mother go take it to her
A young woman softly then said.
I wish to god that I could, was the man’s sad reply
But she’s dead in the van a-head

While the train rolled onwards the husband sat in tears
Thinking of the happiness of just a few short years
Baby’s face brings pictures of a cherished one who’s dead
But baby’s cries can’t waken her
In the luggage van ahead

THE NEW EXHIBITS

(Tune ‘Road to Gundagai’ suggested by Warren Fahey 2005)

‘Say, what are these exhibits called?’, the monkey asked her mate –
‘Those bipeds that the keeper has admitted through the gate,
A longing undeniable the problem to discuss
Have I – oh, tell me what they are, who come to live with us?’.

‘Your question is a poser, and my answer’s Humpty Do,
For likewise I am puzzled much’, said monkey Number two.
‘I’ve eyed them up and I’ve eyed them down, I’ve viewed them near and far-
But twist my tail if I can guess what brand of beast they are’.

Then went the Ape inquisitive, behind a pile of rocks,
And put her question to a seer, to wit the ancient fox.
‘Oh Mr. Fox’ the monkey asked, ‘I come to learn from you,
Particulars concerning those new tenants at the zoo’.

The Fox he wunk a knowing wink, peculiar to seers,
‘Oh they,’ he said, ‘are what are called, the rural volunteers.’
‘God gave to them a backbone each (but right against their wish) –
They much prefer to emulate the spineless jelly-fish!’

‘God gave them strength with which to help the weak who call for aid –
It was, I think, the one mistake that ever heaven made!’
And curious folk they are at best- the cuss’edest of all:
God gave them legs—and-yet —how strange!—they each prefer to crawl’.

‘God gave them eyes with which to see but bitter facts remind
My comprehension stubbornly that most of them are blind!
God gave them each a brain to use—but—this you wouldn’t guess –
They get their thinking done for them by ‘Bulging Belly’s Press’.

‘I thank you much,’ the monkey said, ‘I felt most strangely queer
As though impelled to vomiting whenever they came near.
It isn’t fair to our good name, to either fox or ape-
So when the night enfolds the Zoo I’m making my escape!’

(By R.J. Cassidy, 1917)

THE PER. WAY MAN AND THE PUP

In regard to this song Brian Dunnett, a retired rail worker, comments:

There is a long history of this indicating the custom to raise money for the wife who didn’t need the tools but some money to keep going entitlements like super died with the bloke. This happened to my grandfather my grandmother got nothing the day after he died.  It still happening to some degree my father who died at Xmas he was on an old pension system mum’s entitlements were not just halved but she will be lucky to end up with a third that they both struggled to pay off. Also indicates connections with Workshops

Per way: Short for the permanent way. Railway Tracks were seen as on going permanent structure.

THE PER. WAY MAN AND THE PUP
(By ‘exchange’)

Often as I slave and stew,
Digging in these dirty ditches,
I have dared to think of you –
You and all your riches.
Lackeys help you on and off,
And the bed is silk you lie in;
You have doctors when you cough,
Priests when you are dying.

Wrapt in soft and costly furs,
All sewed up with careful stitches,
You consort with proper curs
And with perfumed bitches.
You don’t sweat to struggle free,
Work in rags and rotten breeches –
Puppy, have a laugh at me
Digging in the ditches.

The Railroad Issue 1928/29

THE SCAB’S DREAM

Last night I lay a-sleeping
I had an awful dream
I dreamt that I was back again in 1917.

I saw the drivers and firemen
And thought it the greatest sight
To see such a body of workmen
Staying out for their rights.

So I came out on strike with them
But the boss came to me next day
And appointed me a driver
And a rise of four bob a day.

And when I saw my old mates
Men that always lent me a bob,
They turned their heads and whispered,
“He took an old man’s job”
And when I look at my little boy,
So happy, young and gay,
He doesn’t care if I scabbed it
But I wonder will he some day.

Then in my dreams I wander to 1937
My boy has grown to manhood
He is the pick of an Australian Eleven.
He comes to me one evening
With a look I had never seen,
And said: “Dad, what did you do in 1917?”
For a moment I was dumbfounded
He had taken my breath away
Then I answered,
“I stuck to the Government and worked sixteen hours a day”

Not another word was spoken
He left me with bowed-down head
Next morning when I went to his room
I found him lying dead
And there a note was written:
“I love you, dearly dad,
I could not live to be happy
To think I am a son of a scab.”

Then I woke with the consolation
It was only a silly dream
I would give all I possess in this wide, wide world
To live again through seventeen.

(By ‘HJL’ and published in The Railway Issue Jan. 1927)

THE SEVENTY TWO

Attributed to ‘Johnson 28’ who also illustrated it.

There are trains on every roster,
That are tough and hard to do,
Some are packed right to the scuppers,
You just push and tumble through,
But the daddy of the ‘heavies’
Packed in tight the whole way through,
And we dread the daily ‘strafing’
Of the Seven Thirty Two.

We are steaming out of Strathfield,
Up the bank we’re moving slow,
And a tearful little flapper
Sobs out “Please get off my toe”
And be-whiskered, ancient smokers,
Roar grunt and snarl at you,
As you crush their corns and Stetsons,
On the Seven Twenty two.

Steady now! The track is bumpy
You just lurch and fall around,
You crush a foot beneath you,
Oh! My ticket can’t be found,
That’s one and tuppence ha’penny,
Oh! How horrid, season too!
And you grimly write excess fares
On the Seven Twenty Two.

They are packed on every platform,
How they groan as they press by,
Hold your breath! my, new silk stockings!
And a lady starts to cry;
Then you murmur, oh, so sorry,
Once again start shoving through,
The fat ones sigh, as you go by,
On the Seven Twenty Two

Now we’re rushing on through Newtown,
Getting breathing space again,
And you seem a bit more steady,
You are nearly through the train,
When you reach the last car platform,
What relief it is to you,
For the passengers are angry
On the Seven Twenty Two.

There may be trains more crowded
Full of flappers dressed so neat,
But it’s not so nice to hear ’em,
When you stand upon their feet,
Let’s hope I get no stouter,
For fat men would never do,
To collect and see the tickets,
On the Seven Twenty Two.

THE SPIRITUAL TRAIN

The Line to Heaven by Christ was made,
With heavenly truth the rails were laid,
From earth to Heaven the line extends,
To life eternal where it ends.
Repentance is the Station then,
Where passengers are taken in,
No fee for them is there to pay,
For Jesus is himself the way.
God’s word is the First Engineer,
It points the way to Heaven so clear.
Through tunnels dark and dreary here,
It does the way to Glory steer.
God’s Love the Fire, his Truth the steam,
Which drives the Engine and the Train.
All you who would to Glory ride,
Must come to Christ, in him abide.
In First, and Second, and then Third Class,
Repentance, Faith and Holiness,
You must the way to Glory gain,
Or you with Christ will not remain.
Come then, poor Sinners, now’s the time,
At any station on the Line,
If you’ll repent and turn from sin,
The Train will stop and take you in.

Anon
Published in Australian Voices. 1968

THOSE BRAVE OLD RAILWAY GENTLEMEN

The Retired Railway Gentlemen’s Rest Home Christmas Re-union at the Railway Institute—as seen, and related by ex-Guard Tom Turtle.

(Tune: Fine Old English Gentleman)

That’s where the brave old veterans met, of various ripe old ages
To talk about the good old days, their salaries and their wages.
To keep these “Beanos” most select—a motion was submitted—
That boys of under sixty years were not to be admitted.
The train men soon forgot the past—the “failures” and “hot boxes” They had been fully occupied in purchasing hot soek-es.
To help them look their very best, they wore their Sunday clobber
And bought ’emselves a nice new hat for twelve or fifteen bob-er.
These brave old Railway veterans—all of the good old days.

There were pictures all around the walls—of engines, trucks and trains-es,
Electric staffs and tablets, with loops of couplin’ chains-es.
A trophy made with railway gear—of barrows, ropes and sprags-es
And detonators, oily waste, some old hand lamps and flags-es
And there these dear old buffers sat in Sunday shoes and hose-es
And drank big mugs of Billy Tea to warm their dear old noses
They swapped tall yarns of bygone years—of life-and death escapes-es
Of funny things they’d seen and beard, of various size and shapes-es
These fine old railway gentlemen—all of the good old days.

Guard Jabbers told an awful tale of fierce cyclonic breeze-es
When all the bloomin’ bark and leaves was blown off all the trees-es
When the Station Master lost his hair—a-scratchin’ of his brains-es
While try in’ hard to get a glimpse of fly in’ trucks and trains-es
For the rivers all wus roarin’ with the very worst of floods-es
Which covered every bloomin’ train with logs and rocks and muds-es
The bridges was all upside down—the rails wus tie in knots-es
(He was too full to tell ’em more—so that M all the lots-es)

These fine old truthful railway men—all ‘of the good old days.

From The Retired Rail and Tramwayman 1933

NOTE:
Referring to the above accompanying poem by the late J. V. McCarney, submitted by Mick Mulhearn who says that there were three brothers McCarney in the loco up north in those early days, John Vincent, Tom and Joe. Each was given a special name so to dis- tinguish them one from the other. Mick says he knew all the men mentioned. The names of those referred to as Dr, Old Nat, Dug and Cabby are Jimmy Mc- Donald, Nat Munso”: Andy Douglas and old Bill Parsons. Cabby resigned in the 8O’s and kept the Lass O’Gowrie hotel at Wicham.

The train was a bout to start when the door of a carriage opened containing a solitary traveller. A pretty blond girl stepped in and sat in the corner seat. “Excuse me…” the travelling salesman started to say, “If you speak or annoy me I shall call the conductor” snapped the pretty girl.

The train rolled on, and after a lengthy pause the man made another effort to speak, but again the girl threatened to call the conductor. At last, the train rolled into Central and the man rose with determination in his eyes. “I don’t give a damn if you call the conductor” he said, “but I want that bag of grapes you’ve been sitting on for the last ten miles.”

Pinkie march 1 1927

THE TRIPLE R

Napoleon – the warrior,
In days of long ago,
Gave out some words of wisdom,
To his soldiers, grouped below,
An army! thundered ‘Boney’
On its stomach, goes to fight,
And after an inspection, of the RRR
Nap’s Right!

For an army in its thousands,
Daily marches to the sign,
Where they fill your little tummies,
When you travel down the line,
See them sit and toy with cutlets,
Cups of tea and coffee too,
Pies and curry, rice and custard,
Soups, Porterhouse and ‘Stoo’.

Mid the rattle of the crockery,
Scullery girls in snowy dresses,
Wash the dishes neat and clean,
Cups, saucers, spoons and teapots,
At attention! Stand and shine;
For they’re waiting on the diners,
That will come at dinner time.

Watch them piling on the sauces,
With their sausages and mash,
Some eat slowly, others rush it,
Then they swiftly make a dash,
For a bell is loudly ringing,
As they hurry through the door,
With ports and rugs and baskets,
For the seven twenty-four.

But the man who really matters,
Is the cook, who stands and waits,
For the browning of the sausage,
With an eye upon the gates,
Then down the chute you hear it,
Eggs and bacon! Soup for two!
Then our cook twirls up his whiskers
And the grills prepare to do.

Up the chute the grills go sailing,
To the girls that wait with trays,
Watch them quick and safely stack ’em.
As they go their many ways,
There’s a glass of milk for baby,
And a grill for Honey Sue,
Then old grandpa in the corner,
Roars out “How about my stoo!”

So I could go on forever,
Just describing how they eat,
How they wait and grow impatient,
Roll their eyes and stamp their feet,
But in spite of modern methods,
We can’t live on sand and tar,
Let this game of ‘eats’ continue,
At the good old RRR.

The Railroad 1939

TURNING THE TURF

Turning the turf on the first Australian railway.
Commemorative silk program held in the Mitchell Library
The program details the music played on this day at the luncheon.

God Save The Queen
The Grand March
Prince Albert’s march
The Roast Beef if Old England
Railway Gallop
British Grenadiers/Rule Britannia
Here’s a Health to all Good Lasses
For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow
National Anthem

Retired rail & Tramwaymen. 1942

A stuttering sailor aboard the Shirley Ann who, just as the ship was getting out to sea, dashed up the bridge to the Captain. He was out of breath, and in a state of great excitement – stuttering and splattering and unable to get a word out.
The Captain, who knew the sailor well, shouted: “Sing it, man! Sing it!”

The sailor looked at him and began:
Should old acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind
The blooming cook fell overboard
And he’s half a mile behind.

Retired Rail and Tramwaymen. 1945

WE’RE ALL TRAVELLERS

(Tune: We’re All A-Noddin’)
To be sung on Sundays by the visitors at Cremorne

We’re all poor travellers, trav—trav—travellers,
We’re all a travelling to the country from the town:
So come along, friend Ellis, now, just let us have a glass
To drink the health of your Cremorne in bumpers as we pass ;
For, though the Melbourne magistrates have said you mustn’t do it,
They’ve also said you must, you know, and you should keep them to it:

And we’re all travellers, &c.

This gentleman’s travelling, trav—trav—travelling,
With his wife and his family they’re travelling for their health.
He works hard all the week, and now on Sunday he would fain
Enjoy the pure and fragrant air, and the fresh green trees again:

So Ellis, serve them out some stout to wash their dinners down,
They’re faint and thirsty after travelling all the way from town:

For we’re all travellers, &c.

These young ladies are travelling, trav—trav—travelling,
With their sweethearts they’re travelling for love and change of air.
See how the light of innocence in their clear eyes reposes,
And how the dust has. settled down upon their cheeks and noses;
They’ve travelled by a weary road—are choking, thirsty, very,—
They can’t drink lemonade alone—come, just one glass of sherry:

For we’re all travellere,..&c.

We’re all a travelling, trav—trav—travelling,
We’re all a travelling, sir, so let us have a drain:
You need’nt fear that we would peach though you should transgress the Law,
We like justice more than any law that ever yet we saw;
Besides, it has been settled by the District Bench, you know,
That travelers never from your doors unentertained should go;

And we’re all travellers, &c.

We’re all travellers, trav—trav—travellers,
We’re all a travelling to the country from the town
So now, throw open wide the gates—Cremorne’s restored at last
To accommodate the travelers that come so thick and fast;
Travellers from Hawthorne, Prahran, Richmond, Collingwood, Mid over the way,
Travellers that are travelers for the sake of being able to say
We’re all travellers, trav—trav—travelers,
We’re all travellers, so turn us not away.

Source: THE ARMCHAIR MAGAZINE
Published Melbourne and also appears as Armchair Chronicle
1853

WHO OWNS WHAT?

When the workmen own our workshops
And the railwaymen the rails
And the grocery assistants own the groceries
And the postmen own the mails;

When the preachers own the pulpits
And the cahiers own the shops
And the coal-miners own the coal-mines
And the goals are owned by cops

When the conductors own our tram-cars
And each driver owns a bus
Will you ask the rest of the people
What the hell happens to us?

(From Vic’s Book of Jokes, Recitations, Clever sayings.
First edition. April/July 1928 Published Melbourne. Vic James)

WITHOUT A CARD

“I ought to get a large reward
For never owning a Union card;
I’ve never grumbled, I’ve never struck,
I’ve never mixed with the Union truck,
But I must be going my way to win,
So, open, Peter and let me in.”
St Peter sat and shook his staff,
Despite his high office, he had to laugh.Said he, with a fiery gleam in his eye,
“Who’s tending this gate – you or I?
5I’ve heard of you with your gift of gab,
You’re what is known on earth as a scab.”
Thereupon he rose to his stature tall,
And pressed a button upon the wall;
And said to the imp who answered the bell,
“Lead this fellow around to Hell.”“Tell Satan to give him a seat alone
On a red-hot griddle up near the throne –
But stay – even the Devil can’t stand the smell
Of a cooking scab on a griddle in hell;
It would cause a revolt, a strike, I know,
If I send you down to the imps below,
So, back to your master on earth, and tell
That they don’t even want any scabs in Hell.”The Railway Issue 1929

YOUR TOOL BOX WILL BE RAFFLED BY AND BY

By Jo Evans. (Possible Parody: You’ll Have Pie, By and By) in The Railroad Gazette Issue 1927

I must shortly leave the banker,
For my card is long exempt.
The fire of youth has vanished from my eye,
And the saddest thought today
Is when I have passed away
That my tool box will be raffled by and by.

Chorus
I have roamed around the country,
But I am getting stiff and old;
And now I am travelling home again to die.
Though you’re young and strong today,
Yet the years pass away,
And your tool box will be raffled by and by.

When I was but a ‘prentice lad,
Just starting at the trade,
Some chump would make me mad enough to cry,
But I heeded not his chaff,
For this saying made me laugh,
That “his tool box would be raffled by and by.”

When I became a journeyman
And started on the road,
With pockets light, but spirits always high,
I was never known to shirk
From the hardest kind of work,
But my tool box may be raffled by and by.

Sometimes I thought it hard
When I struck a stranger’s yard,
And a rumper worked with malice in his eye,
But I merely used to grin,
As I said, “My boy, go in,
But your tool box will be raffled by and by.”

You may often meet a sneak,
Who with manner soft and meek,
Will do his best to keep you on the sly.
Keep your eye on the lad,
Let this saying make you glad,
That “his tool box will be raffled by and by”

I must end my little song,
And be jogging right along,
My journey’s end is drawing very nigh;
Take my advice be fair,
Act the man, upon the square,
For your tool box may be raffled by and by.