G'day,
Well here is my first attempt at blogging.
Everyone calls me have a chat and reckons that I can talk under water with a mouth full of marbles. I hope that my workmate Gary, who is now becomming a regular blogger on his LLC&WW (Lakers Locomotive, Carriage & Wagon Workshop) Blog has not created a monster.
Having worked on the NSW railway for the past 33 years, mainly on the Illawarra line, I have had the opportunity to meet and work with some great characters and had some great experiences and stories to tell, which you may enjoy hearing about.
I have enjoyed collecting Australian model trains and modelling the railways of NSW for the same period of time as that worked, both work and hobby have given me a wealth of knowledge and experiences that I may be able to share with others to assist their own modelling experiences and to help them understand the work practices of the not too distant past in NSW railway history.
At 49 (an only just made it, 1960 model), I am only a boy when it comes to Railway History as unfortunately for me, I missed the great steam years of the NSW railways (childhood memories only) and entered my career during the mid to late dieselization period and eventually the demise of the great diesel hauled passenger trains.
The 1970s was a great time to be employed by the Railway, then called The PTC of NSW (Public Transport Commission of NSW). I was 16 and had just left school at the end of 4th form (Year 10 now days) and enjoying my Christmas / New Year holidays while contemplating what kind of work I was going to look for in this great big world of ours.
I was living with my grandparents at the time and assisting my grandad with maintaining our buses, we owned the Helensburgh Bus Service. My grandad came in off one of the service runs one morning after picking up the mail bags for the post office off one of the trains from Sydney proceeding down the south coast to Wollongong and said that he has been talking to Lindsay, Station Master at Helensburgh railway station and that he informed him that it was time for Donny the Junior Station Assistant to move on to another location and up through the grades as he was over the required age for a JSA and was to become a Station Assistant class 3, most likely at Wollongong as Helensburgh was under the control of the District Superintendent Wollongong.
Lindsay had said that the position of JSA would be filled as soon as somebody applied for the position by making application at the railway station and that if I was interested, I could attend the station and fill out an application form for the position.
I was over the moon, I was wrapped and I was tickled pink to think that here I am just getting into model trains and now getting the chance to work in my local township on the railway station with the real deal, watching and admiring trains. Wow, wow, wow, I couldnt believe it, I had butterflys in my stomach with nervousness, but I jumped at the chance and went down on the next bus with my Grandad to meet Lindsay, find out about the job and what it entailed and fill out the paperwork. I had led a fairly sheltered and protected life up until then and not come out of my shell, so to speak.
More to come next time around, as it's off to bed after Night Shift, Happy Modelling and Rail Reminissing.
Regards
Layne
