A rail link from Goulburn to Sydney was first proposed in 1846 at an estimated cost of (pounds) 6000 per mile. Work was started 1850 by the Sydney and Goulburn railway company, but in 1854 it turned its interests over to the government. In 1869, the railway did come to Goulburn. It was the first city west of the mountains to be reached. In that year the NSW railway system consisted of 328 km of track. It carried 616,375 passengers and 517,022 tonnes of goods.
In 1870 there was a proposal for horse drawn trams to connect Goulburn with other country towns by horse tramways. One horse would be able to draw the 16 1/2 tonne of daily traffic expected between Goulburn and Yass. A train line between Goulburn and Yass had been surveyed and costed at (pounds) 10 000 per mile. In response to the report cheaper lines in three different gauges were then surveyed.
The train line was extended in 1875 to Gunning, and in 1881 to Albury. During this early period Goulburn developed as a centre for wool, wheat and other produce to be brought for transportation to Sydney. It was a convenient distance from Sydney to become an administrative centre. A 'permanent way' workshop was established in 1882, responsible for the permanent way from Picton to Albury. Production, first of wheat, then of wool, rose significantly after the arrival of the railway.
'In 1865 the tonnage of wool carried on the railways amounted to less than 4,000... now approximately 165,000 tons of wool are carried annually .... the first export of wheat [being/was] in 1898 when less than 260,000 tons of grain were carried by rail; the approximate annual tonnage is now over 2,000,000.' Assistant Commissioner of Railways in 1940
However, government policy on railway pricing meant that it was cheaper to dispatch from country towns to Sydney than between country towns, and so Goulburn never grew to be the commercial and manufacturing centre that some envisaged.
The Railway Refreshment Room was opened in 1883. Goulburn led the way in the operation of platform tickets. In the 1880s the custom grew of buying a twopenny ticket to North Goulburn for admission to the platform.
In August 1917 Goulburn railway workers joined in the great railway strike, which started in the Randwick Rail and Tramway Workshops over a card system of recording the particulars of staff employed in the Workshop. At first support in Goulburn was high with up to 200 railway workers going on strike. Although it led to a general strike in NSW, no other unions in Goulburn came out in support of the railway workers. Many railway workers continued to work, and the Penny Post records schoolboys taking on light tasks such as cleaning. Only about 250 men remained out on strike for the duration of the strike. The community was divided with reports of incidents such as the dismissal of a hotel staff member who refused to serve a 'loyalist' railway worker. After six weeks the unions voted to return to work on the Commissioner's terms. Almost all the Goulburn railway workers who had been dismissed were re-employed by October.
By 1945 the Auistralian Railways Union (ARU) had opened a district office in Goulburn. The local organiser covered 13,000 miles during 1945-47 attending meetings, visiting workers in the field and joining in railway picnics. The union opened a holiday camp at Sussex Inlet on the NSW South Coast which in 1948 averaged 100 visitors per year, a large proportion being members and their families from the far west who could not normally afford a holiday at the coast.
The Communist Party of Australia (CPA) was active in the railways union. In NSW this was mostly expressed through the shop committees at the workshops, as the NSW ARU officials were largely hostile. The shop committees tended to lobby for basic needs of the workshop staff. Although the union covered these staff, geographically they were more thinly spread, covering a much larger work base, and so even if the work of the shop committees was not always welcome to the union's state officials, it filled a need. In 1945 Jack Ferguson (NSW Secretary?) declared that the ARU was not a red-baiting organisation (he had been a member of the CPA), and said 'Communism, as a political belief, possesses much that is acceptable, and in the organisation Communists can be numbered among our union builders.' But by 1946 he was attacking the CPA, declaring that there were CPA saboteurs attempting to wreck the union. At the NSW ALP Conference he moved a motion condemning the CPA, which was carried by 300 votes to 40.
1943 saw strikes on the NSW coalfields. Trains services were immediately reduced. Passenger and goods services were reduced by 10%, and trucks were provided to carry coal and foodstuffs. By the end of June 1943 the railways had less than three weeks reserve of coal. Coal strikes continued and in June 1946 electric train services in Sydney were reduced from one every 15 minutes to one every hour. There was restrictions on freight, elimination of sleeping cars, and a 50% cut in country mail trains. In 1948 government regulations were relaxed to allow road haulers to carry the freight that the railways had to refuse. In the Miners' Federation strikes of 1949 the Australian Council of the ARU voted to support the Miners' Federation, but the NSW delegates left the meeting. NSW defied the vote, assisting with a coal lift of 700 tons by train, with police protection. The issue bitterly divided branches, with some refusing to assist in scabbing.
In August 1952 for the first time since the war rail freight trucks were idle
from lack of freight. At the Darling Harbour goods yard the volume of freight
had dropped by 100 tons a day. Road transport, despite continuing
restrictions, was still growing. Retrenchments were stopped by union lobbying,
but industrial action was considered problematic, as many of the members were
isolated, and there was a general apathy among the membership. In the 1950s
many of the steam locomotives were replaced by diesel locos. These were faster
and less labour intensive, meaning that local centres which had grown up around
regional depots would be wound down. Although the department guaranteed no
retrenchments, the large number of transfers meant that these small centres
were largely disbanded.
War
When the Second World War broke out, almost 80 percent of Australian goods traffic was carried by shipping services. However, it was not possible to replace this transport with rail services because the infrastructure of rail was not capable of carrying the quantities required and was hampered by differing gauges.
In the period from 1938 to 1945 passenger journeys increased from 186,719,964 to 254,099,105 and freight traffic increased from 14 to 17 million tons, as well the railways were carrying 1.8 million military personnel. But the number of trains waiting out of service for repairs fell, and the speed of trains in the system increased. The war placed large strains on resources. In the refreshment rooms, staff regularly had to cope with trains carrying as many as three thousand troops.
The Commissioner expressed the concern that engine drivers and firemen were working such long hours and under such strain that safety could be compromised. Railway cleaners were serving as firemen and firemen were serving as drivers to keep the system going. As the war continued there were more trains, but fewer staff to operate them. The NSW Railways had 4000 employees serving with the armed forces and more than 4000 engaged on works of defence value.
In order to prevent the system collapsing during the war railway workers waived holidays and worked increased hours. Traffic staff worked a 13 day fortnight. At Chullora the day was increased from 8 to 11 hours. One thousand women were employed to overcome shortages as cleaners, clerks, porters, labourers, lorry drivers and machine operators.
The railways also helped directly with war work. At its height 2000 staff carried out aircraft production at Chullora.
'Defence work which has been done by the railways up to date has included design, supervision, inspection and manufacture, and has involved the production of parts for guns, ammunition, aeroplane components, jigs and tools, tents and miscellaneous military equipment.'
Lieutenant-Colonel M.F. Bruxner, Minister for Transport in the Legislative Assembly 1940
Plans for rail transport and construction of signal gauge rails were put in place to meet this crisis, but some were never constructed, and others did not open until after the war. Traffic at gauge change stations reached over 2 million tons a year. Special depots had to be created with extra personnel for storage of military supplies at these stations.
'The maximum capacity of military movement between the eastern States and Western Australia was one train a day each way [because] the Commonwealth standard-gauge line between Port Pirie and Kalgoorlie [was] cut off by breaks of gauge from the standard-gauge system of New South Wales'
Assistant Secretary of the Department of the Army, Eric Harding.
New South Wales rolling stock could otherwise have been used to boost this service to 24 trains a day in each direction if needed.
In 1942 emergency regulations were brought in for transport. No one was allowed to travel interstate without a permit, and many goods also needed a permit to be transported interstate. All station signs that could be seen by low flying aircraft were removed on stations within a hundred miles of Sydney, and the guards called the names of the stations.
At the end of the war industrial action surfaced, including a strike on VE Day. This was provoked by railway workers anger at having to work on VE Day, a declared holiday. Ad hoc pay increases during the war had left some groups with strong grievances. Normal resumption of train services in 1946 meant that railway workers who had been looking forward to regular days off and holidays were alarmed at the prospect of having to work extra hours. Staff shortages continued, with a large number leaving when manpower regulations were lifted by the Federal Government.
During the Second World War, one thousand women were employed to overcome shortages as cleaners, clerks, porters, labourers, lorry drivers and machine operators. Although there was talk of removing women from railway work at the end of the war, by 1947 seventy-five extra women had been employed to alleviate the shortage of carriage cleaners.
The ARU was concerned that the increased levels of women in the work force would erode pay rates. During the war women were only paid 54% of the wage of a man. The union threw its support behind the campaign of the Council for Equal Pay. In 1949 a new award was made by the Commonwealth Arbitration Court, superseding the terms that women had been working under during the war as set by the Women's Employment Board. This new award gave women porters and carriage cleaners 100% of the men's rate. Women before the Arbitration Court testified that many of them wanted careers, and depended on these jobs as livelihood. In the wider community, the first major increase in the basic wage after the war, in 1950, set female rates at 75% of men's.
Gunn, JohnAlong Parallel Lines ,Melbourne University Press, 1989
Hearn, MarkWorking Lives, Hale & Ironmonger, 1990, Sydney
Lee, Robert The Greatest Public Work, Hale & Ironmonger, 1988
