Walhalla Goldfields Railway
The Walhalla Goldfields Railway is a narrow gauge heritage railway in the region of Gippsland, east of Melbourne, Australia. Your track width is 762 mm (2 ft 6 in ).
History
The railway was originally, as the Puffing Billy Railway, one of the four tentatively built narrow gauge railways in the Victorian Railways (VR ), which originated at the beginning of the 20th century. It runs from Moe to the gold mining town of Walhalla. The line was opened in 1910, but shortly thereafter, in 1914 the largest gold mines in the Walhalla city were closed, and the population of the city has fallen sharply.
1944, ceased operations between Erica and Walhalla, except for occasional freight by Platina. From 1952 onwards no trains ran further than Erica. All the way from Moe after Erica was discontinued in 1954.
Since Walhalla during the second half of the 20th century became a popular tourist destination, there have been several attempts as a museum railway prepare a part of the railroad again. These hopes, however, remained unfulfilled until the Walhalla Goldfields Railway was founded in the early 1990s.
First, the Thomson Station was rebuilt and renovated the large bridge over the Thomson River. The tracks were then re-routed to the new station Happy Creek. There were six large trestle bridges between Happy Creek and Walhalla, which had to be completely rebuilt, all the way to Valhalla was taken until ten years later in 2002 in operation.
Today, trains run between Walhalla and Thomson, a reconstruction of the route Thomson Erica is currently planned.
Vehicle material
At the time of Victorian Railways steam locomotives were used only. In the beginning these were exclusively 1'C1' tank locomotives of the nA class, but the relatively small nAs could not draw heavily loaded trains, and Garratt locomotive G42 was taken in 1926 in operation. All preserved locomotives of the narrow gauge railways in the Victorian Railways are currently on the Puffing Billy Railway and were the Walhalla Goldfields Railway is not available when the track by Thomson was reopened in 1994.
Two diesel locomotives were purchased from various disused industrial railways in the state of Victoria, which are still used today in front of almost all trains. As a future extension of the railway need stronger locomotives, in 2002 bought and rebuilt a larger diesel locomotive from the Emu Bay Railway and a fourth diesel locomotive by Queensland Rail in November 2010, which is expected remodeled.
2002-06 also a smaller steam locomotive was implemented occasionally, their private properties gave the locomotive to the WGR. This locomotive was built in 1956 by Henschel and Son in Germany and served a sugar factory in Thailand. After the closure of the sugar factory, this as well as another identical locomotive was purchased and brought to Australia. Due to the low tensile hours this Henschel locomotive could only draw profitable trains by means of one of the diesel locomotives, and since 2006 it is no longer used, although it is still on the Walhalla railway station in the shed.
In May 2010, was loaned to the 100th anniversary of the railway Moe - Walhalla nA a locomotive 6A of the Puffing Billy Railway steam train rides and organized.