We are celebrating
50 years of Main Line diesel traction
in Australia!

Welcome to our archive of historical and editorial stuff

relating to South Australian and associated Rail systems

We have a very important 50th birthday to celebrate!
Starting in the first week of September 2001
we celebrate the commissioning of "Lady Norrie"
South Australian Railways locomotive 900
built in our Islington Workshops...

and ten days later...

Commissioning of "Robert Gordon Menzies"
Commonwealth Railways GM1
built at Granville (new South Wales) by Clyde Engineering

While there was an unofficial race between both builders and railway
companies - the locally built "Lady Norrie" had a slight edge,
as much as anything because of being built by the railways themselves...

and while we shall be accurate in our reporting, we obviously
have to give the prize for "first past the post" to the actual winner

on 10th September 1951, "Lady Norrie" officially entered traffic,
having recorded its first revenue run on 6th September
hauling 493 tons goods (freight) from Mile End to Port Pirie.

"Robert Gordon Menzies" made a trial run from Clyde Engineering's
works to Penrith (NSW) on 24th August 1951,
and was delivered towed on Victorian Steam locomotive tender bogies
on the Broad Gauge from Albury through Melbourne and Adelaide
to Port Pirie, arriving on 21st September 1951.

It was then bogie exchanged and placed in service the following day,
working to Port Augusta with a goods train.

So, they were both very close, and we won't argue
about which actually started its engine first :)

Please take this link to our celebration site

Thank you for celebrating with us
50 years of Main-Line diesel-electric traction
on Australian Railways - not just in South Australia...

after all South Australia is known as
Australia's leader in technological innovation :)

Please press here to go to the opening page on our currently incomplete site.
Our old site is now largely dismantled, so the link from here has been removed.

write to us by email from here

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We have a sister site at
http://railsim-australian.freeservers.com
where a number of locomotive and track files of mainly South Australian protoype
have been constructed for use with the German train driving simulator "RailSim".
If you are interested, please take this link.