Acknowledgements

Dave Phillips recognised the coming of the rationalisations and managed to capture photos during and maybe slightly before our railway history was removed from the physical world. Dave’s photos adorn these pages, and they were the catalyst to start this project. Reflecting back on the coming of change, Dave writes:

The destruction was led by WA starting in the mid seventies, AN – Tassie, and South Aust, next from the early eighties, Vic and NSW mid eighties, and QLD last to be wiped from the early nineties. Many management jobs were taken in the “new ” QR as soon as it was corporatised, by individuals involved in the over severe rationalization of the other states railways. It took only a few brief years to do, what took far longer over the rest of Australia. I still have a newspaper ad somewhere my mother sent, where 50 new manangement positions were created overnight back then in 1991. Some of these “persons” I met were so anti-railway you wondered why they even bothered to turn up to work except for the pay cheques, there was no sense of history, and respect for what had gone before. The last great old Australian cultural institution was about to finally be laid to rest.

Ross Thomson has a site called Vicrailstations, in which he has posted images of railway stations in their current guise – current as in between 1999 and 2006. This is a good companion site for comparing some stations over a period of up to twenty years. There are links on the appropriate pages for this – Ross has kindly allowed us to do this.  While Ross has covered pretty well most of the State of Victoria, we can only offer a handful of lines at present.

Andrew Waugh has a site at www.vrhistory.com and he too has kindly allowed us to link our station pages to the station histories on his site. Note that where such links exist, the content is not ours, nor is it part of this site.

Marcus Wong runs the http://www.railgeelong.com/ site, which has galleries of recent photos of some south west Victorian lines published on this site. With his kind permission, we have linked to the appropriate station galleries over there, which make for fine comparisons between then and now.

Chris Gordon, the creator of Vicsig, has been publishing railway information on the internet since 1997. Chris stuck his hand up and offered to be of assistance, which was accepted with alacrity. So while waiting for batches of scans to come in, we’ll be revisiting the pages and adding appropriate links back to his site: http://www.vicsig.net

Hamish Withington has now weighed in with a shopping bag full of photos for me to scan, as well as an even bigger bunch that he is doing and sending through. Hamish’s rovings took in a fair bit of SE Queensland, and we have kicked off this state with the Brisbane Valley Branch. Hamish also likes buses. Once he fixes his domain issues, you will be able to visit his site at http://www.retrobus.biz

Les Brown has a superb archive of his work from travelling around Victoria from his youth (mostly in Z vans) dating back to the ’60s. Just quietly, his is one of the sites that inspired this one. http://www.brownfam.com.au/trainpics.htm

Eddie Jackson has kindly given us permission to use photos from his late fathers collection: The Jackson Collection. These photos will help us kick off the South Australian section, to which Davo will add his own later. Eddie has set up a site on behalf of his late father, and can be viewed at: http://northernlinesgallery.shutterfly.com/

Rolfe Bozier runs the excellent NSWrail.net site, providing a great resource for all things NSW rail orientated. http://www.nswrail.net

Bob Wilson first came to my attention when I started receiving forwarded emails about his travels, complete with simply excellent historical photos from the 1960’s. Clearly it would be of great benefit to this site if we had permission to use them, and we were fortunate enough to gain his approval to publish his work here. Some of his work has been added to the following published pages: Warwick, Mill Hill and Silverwood

Ian Hammond has kindly allowed us to use his images from the late 60’s on the site. You will find his work  amongst the South Australian Content.

John Masson runs the “Johnny’s Pages” website featuring huge amounts of South Australian Content. He has given us permission to link to his site.

Mike Forsberg contributed a gallery worth of photos from the Daylesford Line. His photos are being held on Mike’s page in guest contributions.

Frank Jones has been sending in a trickle of photos that have now amounted to a respectable number. Frank has a page under guest contributions, but most of his photos have been placed in galleries for existing stations. There is a list on his page.

John Garland and Brian Fletcher have contributed images and have got their own pages in the Victorian Guest Contributions pages. As we move their images to published pages, links to their work will also be left on their pages.

Marcus Wong has been pitching in and giving us a hand by allowing use of some of his excellent photos. You should visit Marcus’s Photo Site, or perhaps his informative Blog.

John Mannion has sent us some images from the Peterborough Division of the South Australian Railways. His work is in the Orroroo and Moockra pages.

Others who have kindly allowed us use of their photos (credited in the captions) or text,  are:

• Graham Watkins
• Gavin Potter
• Rob Stanier
• Michele Muir
• Paul Henderson
• Peter Burkit
• “RetroMelb”