Heading up to Albury

I followed the Hume Highway up at Albury, and stopped in at Seymour, where I found the Travellers Aid ‘Connection Assistance’ service transporting passengers through the railway station underpass.

And saw the northbound Melbourne-Sydney train speed past me.

At Violet Town I visited the Southern Aurora Memorial Garden, which commemorates the crash of the Southern Aurora passenger train in February 1969.

Closer to Albury, the near new VLocity trains were actually running a service that day.

And on the other side of town, I found V/Line’s retired fleet of carriages stored in some sidings, covered in graffiti.

Taking the back roads

Along the way I found country pubs.

Overgrown cemeteries.

Quiet railway stations.

And abandoned ones.

Repeater huts for the Sydney–Melbourne co-axial cable

The Headlie Taylor Header Museum.

The Rock Regional Observatory

And field after field of canola.

Junee, a railway town

I stopped in at the railway town of Junee.

Going for a wander around the Junee Roundhouse Railway Museum.

And took a drive out to the Bethungra Spiral.

Where northbound trains loop around the hill via a tunnel.

And then cross back over themselves, as they climb the grade towards Sydney.

Random industries along the way

At Benalla I found the largest precast concrete facility in the Southern Hemisphere.

Churning out concrete tunnel lining segments for the West Gate Tunnel project.

At Ettamogah I went past the former Norske Skog paper mill.

At the Wodonga Logistics Precinct the state government had just paid $5.5 million for a new natural gas connection.

And in the paddocks outside Uranquinty I found a gas fired power station.

Outside Wagga Wagga was industry galore – the Austrak plant was churning out concrete railway sleepers.

Enirgi Power Storage had a lead acid battery recycling facility.

And Southern Oil Refining had a lube oil recycling plant.

At Berrima I found the Boral cement works.

Maldon had the Allied Mills flour mill.

Outside Marulan I had to stop for an off-road dump truck crossing my path.

And finally, on the Hum Highway I breezed by the Marulan heavy vehicle inspection station.

Photographing freight trains

Of course I’m not going to drive all the way up to New South Wales and not photograph freight trains!

Yet I managed to find the same steel train that goes past my house every day.

Grain trains were the big thing this time of the year.

Trains run by multiple operators.

Moving the harvest in conventional hopper wagons.

As well as specialised containers.

Something different was a train transporting containerised ore to Port Kembla.

Port rail shuttles at Port Botany.

Triple headed intrastate container trains to regional terminals.

And the garbage train which transports Sydney’s waste to a giant landfill outside Canberra.

Rail in, rail out

At the Berrima cement works I found the whole supply chain moving by rail.

Lime from Marulan South.

And aggregate from the Lynwood quarry.

And finished cement despatched by rail.

Along with clinker for further processing.

Coal, coal, coal

Coal is big business up in New South Wales.

And I saw train hauling it everywhere.

Snaking through suburban railway stations.

And through the hills.

Bound for the export terminal at Port Kembla.

A weekend of heritage trains

The October long weekend in NSW was of rail heritage events – the first being Streamliners 2022 at the Goulburn Roundhouse Railway Museum.

With fireworks closing out the event.

The Lachlan Valley Railway was also running train trips from Goulburn to Tarago.

I also visited the Goulburn Crookwell Heritage Railway.

Going for a ride on their gangers trolleys.

Meanwhile Sydney had their annual Transport Heritage Expo.

Steam trains running trips throughout the weekend.

Along with Sydney’s early single-deck electric trains.

Country railcars.

And heritage double decker buses.

Trams in Sydney

I finally got to see the completed CBD and South East Light Rail.

Which uses as wire free power supply down to Circular Quay.

I also paid a visit to the Sydney Tramway Museum.

Where I ended up on a *Melbourne* tram.

And ferries

I couldn’t go to Sydney without photographing a few ferries, including the new Emerald class.

And River class.

But I’m a fan of the older First Fleet class.

And the classic double ended Manly ferries.

Along the Illawarra

I headed down towards Wollongong despite some horrible weather.

Finding trains winding their way down the escarpment.

Along a curving railway.

Following the coast.

Until they finally ended up at the tiny stations of the Port Kembla branch line.

Shipping steel at Port Kembla

I couldn’t miss visiting the Bluescope Port Kembla steelworks.

Iron ore comes in by ship.

Finished steel is shunted around the complex for processing.

And then despatched by rail.

Down the South Coast

I headed down to Kiama, where electric trains terminate.

Passengers switching to a diesel railcar for the last few stops to Bomaderry.

There I found a long grain train headed in the same direction.

Bound for the Shoalhaven Starches plant at Bomaderry, which will turn the grain into wheat starch, gluten and ethanol.

And up into the hills

I took the back roads from Bomaderry back towards the Southern Highlands, driving over the heritage listed Hampden Bridge – one of the few suspension bridges in Australia.

Headed up towards Moreton National Park.

And found Fitzroy Falls.

This scary looking spillway at Pejar Dam.

And what looked like a canal blasted through solid rock.

Which I later discovered was part of the Shoalhaven Scheme – a pumped-storage hydroelectricity facility.

The rain finally clears

After days of rain the sky finally cleared, but the roads were still closed due to flooding.

Looks like I won’t be driving this way!

But at least on one spot along my route, a new high level bridge had opened just in time, taking the road clear of the floodwaters.

Off to Canberra

I decided I’d make a detour via Canberra.

Checking out what passes for the rail service between Sydney and Canberra.

I found a V/Line coach leaving Canberra on the long drive to Bairnsdale.

And the well used first stage of the Canberra Light Rail.

About to be extended south to Woden.

I also made the trip out to the back blocks of Canberra to find their tram depot.

Found one of ACTION’s old orange high floor buses.

A bus with a bike loaded on the front rack.

And dozens of the classic Canberra concrete bus shelters.

And homeward bound

At Albury I found a familiar face – a VLocity train awaiting awaiting departure time for Melbourne.

I decided to head over to Shepparton to capture the end of locomotive hauled trains on that line.

Shunter at work coupling the locomotive up to the carriages.

By the time I got to Murchison East, I was drenched.

My next stop – Bendigo.

My target – Comeng trains awaiting scrapping.

But the weather wasn’t on my side, flood waters rising.

So I high tailed it home, narrowly beating the waters that flooded central Victorian towns like Colbinabbin.

That ended two weeks on the road, followed by two months editing the resulting photos.

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This is an incomplete list of infrastructure that has had to be modified, replaced or rebuilt due to underground mining.

A quick introduction to longwall mining

The Total Environment Centre provide us some background to longwall mining in New South Wales.

Longwall mining is a form of underground coal mining where ‘panels’ of coal are mined side by side separated by narrow ‘pillars’ of rock that act as supports.

A long wall panel can be up to 4km long, 250-400m wide and 1-2m thick. Chocks are then placed lines of up to 400m in length to support the roof.

Coal is cut by a machine called a shearer that moves along the length of the face in front of the chocks, disintegrating the coal, which is then taken by a series of conveyors to the surface.

As coal is removed, the chocks are moved into the newly created cavity. As the longwall progresses through the seam, the cavity behind the longwall, known as the goaf, increases and eventually collapses under the weight of the overlying strata.

This collapsing can cause considerable surface subsidence that may damage the environment and human infrastructure.

Longwall mining in NSW began in 1962. In 1983/84 it accounted for 11% of the state’s raw coal production. This had increased to 36% by 1993/94 and stood at 29% in 2003/04.

Nearly all of the coal mined in NSW lies within the Sydney-Gunnedah Basin and in the five defined coalfields of Gunnedah, Hunter, Newcastle, Western (in the Lithgow / Mudgee area) and Southern (in the Campbelltown / Illawarra area).

Virtually all coal mining in the Southern and Western coalfields is underground.

Douglas Park Bridges, Hume Highway

The first example of modified infrastructure I found was the 285 metre long twin Douglas Park Bridges, which carry the Hume Highway 55 metres above the Nepean River.

The concrete piers having a large steel brace attached where they meet the bridge deck.

The bridge was designed in 1975 by the Department of Main Roads, and did not take land subsidence into consideration, as the Department of Mines indicated mining that they would maintain a coal mining buffer zone around the bridge.

However by the late-1990s approval was given to BHP Coal to expand longwall mining at thier Tower Colliery towards the bridge, provided an extensive monitoring program was put in place.

The impact on the bridge once mining was complete – the abutments were 10 mm closer together, piers had sunk up to 18 mm, and the piers at one end had moved 48.6 mm east.

In the years that followed, the movement in the bridge had worsened, and so in 2007 BHP funded a $9 million project to realign the bridge.

The northern Abutment had moved 57mm, the first Pier around 40mm and the second Pier around 20mm. The next piers were stable.

Because of the different movements, the deck was in a unnatural form and that’s why the bridges had to be realigned. Works had to be proceeded with a minimum of bridge closures.

On the abutments, pot bearings had to be replaced with sliding bearings, which required 4 x 200 tonne jacks to lift the deck. To be able to lift the deck at the Piers, we installed a 40 tonne steel structure to create a lifting base around each Pier.

The realignment was done using 6 x 50 tonne jacks. Once the movement was complete, the bearings had to be welded or clamped to fix the deck to the Piers.

However while this work was still underway, the NSW Government approved further mining was approved beneath the bridge, but this time with a network of 400 sensors collecting deformation data 24 hours a day, along with inclinometers linked to an early warning system.

Trackside solar powered gizmos

Alongside the Melbourne-Sydney railway outside Picton, I found an multiple sets of solar powered instruments connected to the tracks.

And a few kilometres away outside Douglas Park, I found some more complicated looking systems.

Complete with fixed structures for the installation of surveying equipment.

These systems monitor movement in the railway due to mining at the SIMEC Group Tahmoor Colliery and South32 Appin Colliery respectively.

Risk mitigation on the Hume Highway

BHP Billiton Illawarra Coal’s Appin Colliery also passes beneath the Hume Highway at Douglas Park, with land subsidence running the risk of distorting the base of the road pavement. The solution – cutting up the road.

Modelling studies concluded that cutting slots through the existing pavement would be an effective method of dissipating compressive stress in the bound sandstone subbase. As a result of these analyses, the Technical Committee adopted a management strategy where slots would be installed prior to mining.

Sixteen slots were cut in the pavement, eight in each carriageway, directly above the proposed Longwall 703. A further twenty six slots were cut above Longwall 704, for which mining has now started. The spacings of the slots were based mainly on subsidence predictions, with extra slots added within a zone of geological structure.

The Technical Committee recognised that pre-mining slots would probably not be able to accommodate all potential subsidence movements. In particular, irregular subsidence movements could develop, the locations of which could not be identified prior to mining, resulting in locally high compressive stresses in the pavement.

The Technical Committee recognised that additional slots could be installed proactively during mining based on actual monitoring data prior to compressive stresses in the pavement becoming sufficient to result in stepping. Materials, labour and equipment were available to install a new slot within a required 48 hours, with a target to install within 24 hours. This was undertaken on 5 occasions during mining.

Fibre optic sensors were also installed to monitor the movement of the road surface.

BHP Billiton’s Illawarra Coal has embedded three kilometres of fibre optic cables in the Hume Highway to track subsidence caused by a longwall mine that runs under the road.

Illawarra Coal uses fibre Bragg grating sensors to measure temperature and strain at ten-metre intervals along the road’s pavement to detect any forces that could damage the road.

Illawarra Coal’s in-pavement monitoring system is connected to a site-based bank of interrogators that analyse the raw data on a real time basis.

“All data is transferred via wireless network link and is maintained on a web server which is managed by one of the key stakeholders,” a BHP Billiton spokeswoman told iTnews.

“The captured data is compared against pre-determined triggers and has the capability to initiate mobile phone SMS-generated alarms if required for appropriate response as determined by the trigger.”

Replacing a railway tunnel

Just outside of Tahmoor was Redbank Tunnel – a 315 metre long double-track tunnel completed in 1919 as part of the duplication of the Melbourne-Sydney railway.

Google Earth, April 2010

But there was a problem – the nearby Tahmoor Colliery, established in 1975, and expanded in 1994 and 1999.

A further 4.5 million tonnes of coal was located under the tunnel, and Xstrata wanted to expand the mine yet again to extract it, which would destroy the tunnel.

Tahmoor has now undertaken modelling of subsidence impacts on Redbank Tunnel as a result of mining. This modelling has concluded that subsidence impacts would be significant (up to 1130 mm of vertical subsidence) and likely would impact on the structural integrity of the tunnel, resulting in a risk to rail safety on the Main Southern Railway Line which runs through the tunnel.

So their solution – move the railway.

On 21 December 2010, Tahmoor submitted an application to the Department seeking to modify the Minister’s consent (DA 67/98) to allow for mining impacts within Area 3, and thereby to support the proposed mining of these longwalls. In order to avoid the potential impacts on rail safety, Tahmoor proposes to build a major deviation of the Main Southern Railway line for 1.9 km around the tunnel. The modification would also involve construction of a new overbridge to facilitate landowner access to their property once the rail track has been completed.

And decommission the redundant tunnel.

If Redbank Tunnel was left open after it is bypassed, then it is likely that some sections of the Tunnel’s masonry lining would experience cracking, shearing and localised spalling and possible collapses as a result of mining subsidence. Tahmoor therefore proposes to fill the tunnel with material excavated during construction of the proposed deviation, mitigating any potential safety hazards to people who might enter the tunnel and reducing subsidence to the natural surface above the tunnel.

Reshaping the landscape.

Assessment Report: Tahmoor North Mine, Redbank Rail Tunnel Deviation Modification

Work on the deviation commenced in June 2012, with the first train using the new route in December the same year.

Rebuilding a bridge

While chasing trains around Picton, a strange looking bridge caught my eye.

The expansion gap looking far too big for the size of the bridge.

It turns out coal mining at Tahmoor Colliery was also the driver here.

Tahmoor Coal Pty Ltd is currently replacing an existing bridge over the Main Southern Railway Line near Picton in NSW, due to proposed mining works. The new bridge is located immediately to the west of an existing brick arch bridge. The rail overbridge is an asset of Transport for New South Wales with Wollondilly Shire Council owning the connecting road.

The new overbridge is required because of potential subsidence impacts from scheduled longwall mining activities in the area in late 2015 which would compromise the safety of the existing bridge structure. The project also involves realignment of the road approaches and the demolition of the existing bridge.

A key issue in the design was the articulation of the bridge which had to cater for large opening/closure movements and large differential vertical and horizontal movements between the two ends of the bridge. A large movement modular deck joint and large movement sliding spherical bearings were adopted to accommodate these potentially large mine subsidence displacements.

Construction commenced in June 2015 and was completed by November the same year.

Landbridges on the Hume

This pair of bridges on the Hume Highway outside Mittagong don’t look at unusual from above.

Google Maps

Or from the road.

Google Street View

But they don’t actually span a watercourse.

Google Street View

But were built in 2000s to bridge a section of land affected by mine subsidence.

Plan to bridge the Hume Highway at Mittagong
5 June 2001

Working with the Federal Department of Transport and Regional Services (DOTARS), the Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) has commenced preliminary work on the upgrading of the Hume Highway on the Mittagong Bypass.

The south and northbound lanes will be re-built and two new three-lane bridges constructed on this major interstate road corridor as a result of geological changes that have damaged the road surface and surrounding region over time.

To maintain travel conditions for the 16,000 vehicles using this section of the highway every day, the RTA will receive an initial $6 million from the Federal Government to complete planning and to construct median cross-over lanes. These will allow traffic to switch between the north and southbound carriageways once construction of the bridges has commenced.

The crossovers will be located near the Nattai River and Gibbergunyah Creek bridges and are expected to take two months to build.

During construction, lane restrictions will be in place in the area from 7am to 6pm Mondays to Fridays and from 8am to 1pm on Saturdays.

“In recent years, engineers have detected a subsidence in the road caused by the unique geology of the area. However, the current rate of ground movement is extremely slow and presents no short-term risk,” an RTA spokesperson said.

“The area has a very complex geological history, including mining activity at the adjacent Mount Alexandra Coal Mine from the 1950s to the 1970s.

“To ensure the highway continues to provide high standard travel conditions, work on the crossovers has commenced, with construction of the bridges expected to begin later in the year for completion by the end of 2002.”

The RTA expects to let a contract for the bridge works in October. The twin three-lane bridges will be supported by concrete pylons sunk 10 metres into the bedrock and protected from possible future earth movement by steel casings.

The southbound bridge will be built first and then operate temporarily as a single carriageway road carrying traffic in both directions during construction of the second bridge.

“The Hume Highway is Australia’s most important interstate road artery, with funding for improvements and maintenance a Federal Government responsibility,” a Department of Transport and Regional Services spokesperson said.

“Accordingly, the cost of the new bridges will be fully funded by the Federal Government.

“Both the Federal Department and the RTA are working to ensure this essential road route is upgraded quickly and with minimal inconvenience to the travelling public.

Telephone trouble at Tahmoor

Even the Telstra network wasn’t safe from mine subsidence at Tahmoor.

As part of the planning for mining longwall LW32, Tahmoor Coking Coal Operations has identified surface assets which may be affected by the mining operation in Tahmoor north area. Some of these assets belong to Telstra and are part of Telstra’s infrastructure in the area.

Telstra’s major assets in the area are: Tahmoor telephone exchange which is located on the north east corner of Thirlmere Way and Denmead Streets and Picton telephone exchange which is Menangle Street.

As mining has continued north of the telephone exchange the potential for impacts on the major network cable infrastructure has changed as now the longwalls are commencing to impact on the Picton telephone exchange area and the optical fibre cables and copper network to the south of Picton.

The planned longwall mining covering the area.

Management Plan – Longwall Mining beneath Telstra plant at Tahmoor and Picton NSW

With the critical parts of the network being:

a. Optical Fibre Cable – this is predominantly due to the nature of the cable in that it is only able to sustain relatively low ground compressive and tensile strains before the external sheath transfers the strain to the individual fibres within the cable. When this occurs the individual fibres have limited capacity to tolerate tensile or compressive strains before they cause interruption to or failure of transmission systems.

b. Aerial Cable – Aerial cable anchored at adjacent poles or from pole to building can be impacted by ground tilt. Where poles are affected by ground tilt the top of the pole can move such that there is a change in the cable catenery with the potential to either stretch the cable or reduce the ground clearance on the particular cable.

And somehow the legacy copper network got off lightly.

Generally the more extensive Main and Local copper cable network is more robust and able to tolerate reasonable levels of mining induced ground strain. The interaction is complex since the network comprises of very small cable of 5mm diameter up to heavily armoured 60mm diameter cables spread diversely across the entire mining area.

Footnote: and the environment

Water being lost to reservoirs.

NSW’s top water agency has called for curbs on two big coal mines in Sydney’s catchment, saying millions of litres of water are being lost daily and that environmental impacts are likely breaching approval conditions.

Cracks in creeks.

The ground is bulging and cracks are reaching from the surface to the coal seam in a section of Sydney’s drinking water catchment that sits above a mine, according to an independent study commissioned by the state government.

Creeks turning orange.

Flows from a “significant” water source for one of Sydney’s dams are turning orange and disappearing beneath the surface because of an underground coal mine that is slated to expand to beneath the reservoir itself.

180 tonnes of concrete pumped into a creek.

It was meant to be a remediation program to repair extensive mine subsidence damage to Sugarloaf State Conservation Area in the Lower Hunter. Instead it turned one environmental disaster into another. Contractors working for coal giant Glencore Xstrata pumped more than 180 tonnes of concrete into a tributary of Cockle Creek at Lake Macquarie.

And yet new mines are approved beneath reservoirs.

The Berejiklian government has given the nod for the extension of coal mining under one of Greater Sydney’s reservoirs, the first such approval in two decades.

The Planning Department earlier this month told Peabody Energy it could proceed with the extraction of coal from three new longwalls, two of which will go beneath Woronora reservoir.

All of this makes a few damaged bridges and cracked highways pale in comparison.

Further reading

• Mine Subsidence Community Guide (Mine Subsidence Board)
• Impacts of longwall coal mining on the environment in New South Wales (Total Environment Centre, 2007)
• Impacts of underground coal mining on natural features in the Southern Coalfield (NSW Government, 2008)

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Heading east from Melbourne

I took the Monash Freeway out of Melbourne, passing the site of the future Lynbrook station on the Cranbourne line.

And Cardina Road station on the Pakenham line.

I detoured via the Hazelwood Power Station, since demolished.

And followed the railway east to the end of the line, where trucks had taken over the transport of logs from Bairnsdale.

The Raymond Island Ferry was another non-railway detour.

As was Lakes Entrance.

The Princes Highway continued on, where I found a disused railway bridge over the Nicholson River.

And a timber trestle over Stony Creek, outside Nowa Nowa.

The Princes Highway outside Orbost was burnt out following bushfires.

I turned off the highway at Cann River, where I found a retired Hitachi suburban train turned into a house.

And followed the Monaro Highway towards the Snowy Mountains.

Passing through Bombala.

And arriving in Cooma as night fell.

Across the Snowy Mountains

The next day I headed up into the mountains, where I found the Skitube railway.

A rack railway that serves the Thredbo and Perisher Valley skifields.

At Thredbo I found a fleet of shuttle buses parked during the off season.

Before I attacked 65 kilometres of winding road across the Great Dividing Range.

Reaching an elevation of 1580 metres.

With a dusting of snow.

I headed through Kosciuszko National Park.

Passing alpine huts.

And Australia’s highest town at Cabramurra.

But the thing I was really looking for was power stations.

I found high voltage power lines and pressure pipelines.

High voltage electrical switchyards.

And I went on a tour of the Murray 1 hydroelectric power station.

Into the Riverina

Every visit NSW ends up with me passing through Gundagai, and this time was no exception.

But this time I made a side trip off the Hume Highway to the Temora Aviation Museum.

They park their cars a little differently here.

I then doubled back to the Melbourne-Sydney railway at Harden.

Where I was surrounded by a flock of sheep.

Grain trains also use the railway.

Cootamundra and Junee being the hub for grain movements.

Disused grain silos are found all along the railway.

But have been redundant by modern bulk grain facilities.

Small towns like Gunning still had a railway station.

The Melbourne-Sydney XPT is the only public transport to towns like The Rock.

But towns like Binalong have trains pass by without stopping.

Relying on road coach connections.

And finally the Southern Highlands

At Bowral I found a CityRail interurban service stopping for passengers.

But the NSW Rail Museum at Thirlmere was my destination.

Exhibits filling the display hall.

And steam train trips outside.

And a last pit stop

The sun was setting, but I had one more stop to make before Sydney.

The ‘bridge to nowhere’ over the Cordeaux River outside Maldon.

I found the bridge just before night fell – achievement unlocked!

Footnote: new and old at Wodonga

In 2008 Wodonga railway station closed as part of the Wodonga Rail Bypass project.

Replaced by a new station at Wodonga West in 2011.

And my usual bits

Southern Cross Station management blocking the main entrance to the station is nothing new – May 2011 I found a skateboarding display there.

Unfortunately it’s still a problem today.

Meanwhile queues at the Myki gates were only just emerging as a problem – it wasn’t until March 2012 that I first start taking notice of them.

As an interim fix additional overflow gates were added at stations, but it took until 2014 for the first faster ticket gates to be rolled out.

And finally we end on something positive – X’Trapolis trains rolling out of the factory at Alstom Ballarat.

The plant shut down in 2020 following the delivery of the final train, but is due to reopen following a 2021 budget commitment to build 25 X’Trapolis 2.0 trains at the site.

Footnote

Here you can find the rest of my ‘photos from ten years ago‘ series.

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