1.
Beyer, Peacock and Company
–
Beyer, Peacock and Company was an English railway Locomotive manufacturer with a factory in Gorton, Manchester. Founded by Charles Beyer, Richard Peacock and Henry Robertson, it traded from 1854 until 1966 and it received limited liability in 1902, becoming Beyer, Peacock and Company Limited. In 1854, the German born Charles Beyer resigned as engineer at Atlas works. It was Beyer that was responsible for success of production at Atlas. He had trained under the guidance of the inventor of cotton mill machinery. Richard Peacock resigned from his position as engineer of the Manchester, Sheffield. Confident in his ability to secure orders to build locomotives, Beyer’s resignation presented Peacock with a partnership opportunity. However, this was not a company and all partners were liable for debts should the business fail, in a mid-Victorian economic climate of boom and bust. Beyer could raise £9,524 and Peacock £5,500, Beyer and Peacock were founder members of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Unfortunately, Geach died, the loan was recalled and the project nearly died. To the rescue came Thomas Brassey who persuaded Henry Robertson to provide a £4,000 loan in return for being the third partner, Beyer appointed and worked closely with Hermann Ludwig Lange, in 1861. A native of his town, Plauen, Saxony, Langer trained as an engineer in Germany, became chief draughtsman in 1865. Four New South Wales Government Railways AD60 Class Beyer-Garratt Patent locomotives are preserved being the most powerful locomotives in the southern hemisphere when introduced. Gorton Foundry was on the side of the railway line to the Manchester, Sheffield. Between 1855 and 1966, the company built nearly 8,000 railway locomotives, several of their 1874-built steam locomotives for the Isle of Man Railway remain in daily use. A Gorton-built South African Railways GL class Beyer-Garratt locomotive is on display in the Museum of Science, in addition to building steam locomotives, Beyer, Peacock & Co. The foundry was at Openshaw near Manchester, England, and was built in 1854, the site was chosen because land was cheaper than in the city and had good water supply from a local reservoir. Beyer had designed the works so it always allowed room for expansion, in its 112-year history no buildings needed to be demolished as the works developed
2.
0-6-0
–
This was the most common wheel arrangement used on both tender and tank locomotives in versions with both inside and outside cylinders. In the United Kingdom, the Whyte notation of wheel arrangement was often used for the classification of electric and diesel-electric locomotives with side-rod coupled driving wheels. The 0-6-0 configuration was the most widely used wheel arrangement for both tender and tank steam locomotives, the type was also widely used for diesel switchers. On the other hand, the lack of unpowered leading wheels have the result that 0-6-0 locomotives are less stable at speed and they are therefore mostly used on trains where high speed is unnecessary. The tank engine versions were used as switching locomotives since the smaller 0-4-0 types were not large enough to be versatile in this job. The earliest 0-6-0 locomotives had outside cylinders, as these were simpler to construct, however, once designers began to overcome the problem of the breakage of the crank axles, inside cylinder versions were found to be more stable. Thereafter this pattern was adopted, particularly in the United Kingdom. Tank engine versions of the type began to be built in quantity in the mid-1850s and had become common by the mid-1860s. 0-6-0 locomotives were amongst the first types to be used, the earliest recorded example was the Royal George, built by Timothy Hackworth for the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1827. Derwent, a locomotive built in 1845 by William and Alfred Kitching for the Stockton and Darlington Railway, is preserved at Darlington Railway Centre. On most branch lines, though, larger and more powerful tank engines tended to be favoured, in New South Wales, the Z19 class was a tender type with this wheel arrangement, as was the Victorian Railways Y class. The Dorrigo Railway Museum collection includes seven Locomotives of the 0-6-0 wheel arrangement, tank locomotives used by Finland were the VR Class Vr1 and VR Class Vr4. The VR Class Vr1s were numbered 530 to 544,656 to 670 and 787 to 799 and they had outside cylinders and were operational from 1913 to 1975. Built by Tampella, Finland and Hanomag, they were nicknamed Chicken, number 669 is preserved at the Finnish Railway Museum. The Vr4s were a class of four locomotives, numbered 1400 to 1423, originally built as 0-6-0s by Vulcan Iron Works, United States, but modified to 0-6-2s in 1951-1955. Finland’s tender locomotives were the classes C1, C2, C3, C4, C5, the Finnish Steam Locomotive Class C1s were a class of ten locomotives numbered 21 to 30. They were operational from 1869 to 1926 and they were built by Neilson and Company and were nicknamed Bristollari. Number 21, preserved at the Finnish Railway Museum, is the second oldest preserved locomotive in Finland, the eighteen Class C2s were numbered 31 to 43 and 48 to 52
3.
Track gauge
–
In rail transport, track gauge is the spacing of the rails on a railway track and is measured between the inner faces of the load-bearing rails. All vehicles on a network must have running gear that is compatible with the track gauge, as the dominant parameter determining interoperability, it is still frequently used as a descriptor of a route or network. There is a distinction between the gauge and actual gauge at some locality, due to divergence of track components from the nominal. Railway engineers use a device, like a caliper, to measure the actual gauge, the nominal track gauge is the distance between the inner faces of the rails. In current practice, it is specified at a distance below the rail head as the inner faces of the rail head are not necessarily vertical. In some cases in the earliest days of railways, the company saw itself as an infrastructure provider only. Colloquially the wagons might be referred to as four-foot gauge wagons, say and this nominal value does not equate to the flange spacing, as some freedom is allowed for. An infrastructure manager might specify new or replacement track components at a variation from the nominal gauge for pragmatic reasons. Track is defined in old Imperial units or in universally accepted metric units or SI units, Imperial units were established in United Kingdom by The Weights and Measures Act of 1824. In addition, there are constraints, such as the load-carrying capacity of axles. Narrow gauge railways usually cost less to build because they are lighter in construction, using smaller cars and locomotives, as well as smaller bridges, smaller tunnels. Narrow gauge is often used in mountainous terrain, where the savings in civil engineering work can be substantial. Broader gauge railways are generally expensive to build and require wider curves. There is no single perfect gauge, because different environments and economic considerations come into play, a narrow gauge is superior if ones main considerations are economy and tight curvature. For direct, unimpeded routes with high traffic, a broad gauge may be preferable, the Standard, Russian, and 46 gauges are designed to strike a reasonable balance between these factors. In addition to the general trade-off, another important factor is standardization, once a standard has been chosen, and equipment, infrastructure, and training calibrated to that standard, conversion becomes difficult and expensive. This also makes it easier to adopt an existing standard than to invent a new one and this is true of many technologies, including railroad gauges. The reduced cost, greater efficiency, and greater economic opportunity offered by the use of a common standard explains why a number of gauges predominate worldwide
4.
Driving wheel
–
On a steam locomotive, a driving wheel is a powered wheel which is driven by the locomotives pistons. On diesel and electric locomotives, the wheels may be directly driven by the traction motors. Coupling rods are not usually used, and it is common for each axle to have its own motor. Jackshaft drive and coupling rods were used in the past but their use is now confined to shunting locomotives, on an articulated locomotive or a duplex locomotive, driving wheels are grouped into sets which are linked together within the set
5.
Coal
–
Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock usually occurring in rock strata in layers or veins called coal beds or coal seams. The harder forms, such as coal, can be regarded as metamorphic rock because of later exposure to elevated temperature and pressure. Coal is composed primarily of carbon, along with quantities of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen. A fossil fuel, coal forms when plant matter is converted into peat, which in turn is converted into lignite, then sub-bituminous coal, after that bituminous coal. This involves biological and geological processes that take place over time, throughout history, coal has been used as an energy resource, primarily burned for the production of electricity and heat, and is also used for industrial purposes, such as refining metals. Coal is the largest source of energy for the generation of electricity worldwide, the extraction of coal, its use in energy production and its byproducts are all associated with environmental and health effects including climate change. Coal is extracted from the ground by coal mining, since 1983, the worlds top coal producer has been China. In 2015 China produced 3,747 million tonnes of coal –47. 7% of 7,861 million tonnes world coal production, in 2015 other large producers were United States, India, European Union and Australia. The word originally took the col in Old English, from Proto-Germanic *kula. In Old Turkic languages, kül is ash, cinders, öčür is quench, the compound charcoal in Turkic is öčür kül, literally quenched ashes, cinders, coals with elided anlaut ö- and inflection affixes -ülmüş. At various times in the geologic past, the Earth had dense forests in low-lying wetland areas, due to natural processes such as flooding, these forests were buried underneath soil. As more and more soil deposited over them, they were compressed, the temperature also rose as they sank deeper and deeper. As the process continued the plant matter was protected from biodegradation and oxidation and this trapped the carbon in immense peat bogs that were eventually covered and deeply buried by sediments. Under high pressure and high temperature, dead vegetation was slowly converted to coal, as coal contains mainly carbon, the conversion of dead vegetation into coal is called carbonization. The wide, shallow seas of the Carboniferous Period provided ideal conditions for coal formation, the exception is the coal gap in the Permian–Triassic extinction event, where coal is rare. Coal is known from Precambrian strata, which predate land plants — this coal is presumed to have originated from residues of algae, in its dehydrated form, peat is a highly effective absorbent for fuel and oil spills on land and water. It is also used as a conditioner for soil to make it able to retain. Lignite, or brown coal, is the lowest rank of coal, jet, a compact form of lignite, is sometimes polished and has been used as an ornamental stone since the Upper Palaeolithic
6.
Tamworth, New South Wales
–
Tamworth is a city in the New England region of New South Wales, Australia. Straddling the Peel River, Tamworth is the regional centre for the New England region and is in the local government area of Tamworth Regional Council. Approximately 318 km from the Queensland border, the city is located almost midway between Brisbane and Sydney, the two largest cities on the Australian east coast, the city had an estimated population of 42,255 people at 30 June 2015. The city is known as the First City of Lights, being the first place in Australia to use electric lights in 1888. Tamworth is also famous as the Country Music Capital of Australia, annually hosting the Tamworth Country Music Festival in late January, the Kamilaroi people, from whose language comes the word budgerigar, inhabited the area before European contact. In the 1830s, a town began to develop on the Peels southwest bank. In 1850, a town was gazetted on the opposite side of the river from the existing settlement. This town became the town, called Tamworth after Tamworth, Staffordshire. The town prospered, and was reached by the railway in 1878, on 9 November 1888, Tamworth became the first location in Australia to have electric street lighting powered by a municipally owned power station, giving the city the title of First City of Light. The first streetlights used in Australia were commercially owned in Waratah Tasmania in 1886,1818 – Explorer John Oxley passes through the area on his exploration mission. Names the river now runs through the town, Peel River, after British Prime Minister Robert Peel. 1831 – First sheep and cattle stations, namely Joseph Browns Wallamoul, the exploring expedition led by Major Mitchell visited Wallamoul in December 1831 on its way to the north-west. 1834 –6000 sheep of the Australian Agriculture Company were the first to be brought to the Tamworth region,1851 – The white population of the village of Tamworth was 254. 1852 – John Barnes built the Royal Oak Hotel,1866 – Tamworth Mechanics Institute opened. 1882 - Tamworth railway station opened,1883 - Tamworth base hospital opened. 1888 – Power station opened and enables beginning of street lighting. The first electric streetlights in Australia,1918 – An anchor is unveiled as a memorial to the discovery of Tamworth district. 1947 – East-West Airlines was established in Tamworth, flying Tamworth to Sydney,1947 – Institution for Boys home for criminal youth opened
7.
Wagga Wagga
–
Wagga Wagga is a major regional city in the Riverina region of New South Wales, Australia. The central business district is focused around the commercial and recreational grid bounded by Best and Tarcutta Streets and the Murrumbidgee River, the main shopping street of Wagga is Baylis Street which becomes Fitzmaurice Street at the northern end. The city is in a valley and much of the city has a problem with urban salinity. The original inhabitants of the Wagga Wagga region were the Wiradjuri people, in 1829, Charles Sturt became the first European explorer to visit the future site of the city. The town, positioned on the site of a ford across the Murrumbidgee, was surveyed and gazetted as a village in 1849, in 1870, the town was gazetted as a municipality. During the negotiations leading to the federation of the Australian colonies, during World War I the town was the starting point for the Kangaroo recruitment march. The Great Depression and the resulting hardship saw Wagga Wagga become the centre of a movement for the Riverina region. Wagga Wagga became a town during World War II with the establishment of a military base at Kapooka and Royal Australian Air Force bases at Forest Hill. After the war, Wagga Wagga was proclaimed as a city in 1946, in 1982 the city was amalgamated with the neighbouring Kyeamba and Mitchell Shires to form the City of Wagga Wagga local government area. Wagga Wagga is at the end of the Riverina region where the slopes of the Great Dividing Range flatten. The city straddles the Murrumbidgee River, one of the rivers of the Murray-Darling Basin. This location astride some of the transport routes in the nation has made Wagga Wagga an important heavy truck depot for a number of companies including Toll Holdings. Wagga Wagga is upstream from the Riverina plain in the mid-catchment range of the Murrumbidgee River in an alluvial valley confined by low bedrock hills, much of Wagga Wagga is on heavy clay soils in a large drainage basin with a small catchment discharge point. Groundwater therefore cannot leave easily, leading to Wagga Wagga having a problem with waterlogged soil and soil salination, urban salination in Wagga Wagga is now the subject of a large multi-pronged approach to prevent further salination and reclaim salt-affected areas. The main shopping street of Wagga Wagga is Baylis Street which becomes Fitzmaurice Street at the northern end, the Wollundry Lagoon is the water focus of the city centre and has been a key element in the development and separation of the north and south parts of the city centre. Major industrial areas of Wagga Wagga include the suburb of Bomen. Thomas Mitchell, the surveyor who served under Lord Wellington named many of the streets after Peninsula War veterans, Wagga Wagga has a temperate climate with hot dry summers and cool to cold winters. Under the Köppen climate classification, the city has a subtropical climate
8.
Orange, New South Wales
–
Orange /ˈɒrɪndʒ/ is a city in the Central West region of New South Wales, Australia. It is 254 kilometres west of the capital, Sydney. Orange had an urban population of 40,075 as of June 2015 making the city a significant regional centre. According to the 2011 census, the key employment sectors within the City of Orange local government area include health care & social assistance, retail, a significant nearby landmark is Mount Canobolas. With a peak elevation of 1,395 metres it gives commanding views of the district, Orange is the birthplace of poets Banjo Paterson and Kenneth Slessor, although Paterson lived in Orange for only a short time as an infant. Walter W. Stone, book publisher and passionate supporter of Australian literature, was born in Orange. The first Australian Touring Car Championship, known today as V8 Supercar Championship Series, was held at the Gnoo Blas Motor Racing Circuit in 1960. In the late 1820s, the surveyor J. B. Richards worked on a survey of the Macquarie River below Bathurst, on a plan dated 1829, he indicated a village reserve, in the parish of Orange. Initial occupation by British graziers began in late 1829, and tiny settlements eventually turned into larger towns as properties came into connection with the road. In 1844, the surveyor Davidson was sent to check on encroachments onto the land reserved for a village and his choices were Fredericks Valley, Pretty Plains, or Blackmans Swamp. Blackmans Swamp was chosen, and it was proclaimed a village, at nearby Ophir, a significant gold find in Australia was made in 1851, resulting in a sporadic population movement which is known as the Australian gold rush. Additional gold finds in nearby areas led to the establishment of Orange as a trading centre for the gold. The growth of Orange continued as the conditions were well suited for agriculture, the railway from Sydney reached Orange in 1877. In 1946,100 years after it was first being established as a village, Orange was proclaimed as a minor city, in recent years, a large number of vineyards have been planted in the area for rapidly expanding wine production. The growth of wine industry, coupled with the further development of Orange as a gourmet food capital, has ensured Oranges status as a prominent tourism destination. Other large industries include, Cadia gold mine is an open cut gold. The mine has been developed throughout the 1990s and is an employer in the region with an expected lifespan of several decades. Cadia is the second largest open-cut mine in Australia, following the Super Pit at Kalgoorlie, large mineral deposits are also being uncovered from the more recently developed Ridgeway underground mine which is adjacent to the Cadia Mine
9.
Blue Mountains Line
–
The Blue Mountains Line is an intercity rail service operated by NSW TrainLink serving the Blue Mountains region of New South Wales, Australia. The line travels west from Sydney to the town of Katoomba. A limited rail service extends to the city of Bathurst. The Blue Mountains Line operates over a section of the Main Western line, as such, the tracks are also traversed by the Central West XPT, Outback Xplorer and Indian Pacific passenger services and by freight trains. The Blue Mountains line is a section of the Main Western line which opened in 1868, the line was built with gradients as steep as 1 in 33 and curves as sharp as 8 chains. Most of the curves were eased to 12 chains with duplication, the line originally ascended the eastern and descended the western sides of the Blue Mountains via a series of zig-zag track sections. The eastern zig zag was by passed by a tunnel in 1892, goods trains are now exclusively diesel hauled. In June 2012, New South Wales Premier Barry OFarrell announced that services would be extended to Bathurst, the service commenced on 21 October 2012. The line is operated by NSW TrainLink V sets. Modern H sets also operate on the line as far as Springwood, as the electric overhead wiring ends at Lithgow, diesel-electric Endeavour railcars operate the services to and from Bathurst. Most Blue Mountains line services start and terminate from the intercity platforms of Central station and these trains continue to Hornsby via the North Shore line. Many of these trains that service the line have four carriages, with peak hour services having eight carriages
10.
South Australian Railways
–
South Australia is one of the few places in Australia, if not the world that has all three major rail gauges, in addition to other uncommon gauges. The first railway in South Australia was laid in 1854 between Goolwa and Port Elliot to allow for goods to be transferred between paddle steamers on the Murray River and seagoing vessels. The next railway was laid from the harbour at Port Adelaide to the colony and this line was opened in 1856. Later on, branch lines in the north in the mining towns of Kapunda. From here, a main line extended to meet the horse tramway from Victor Harbor to Strathalbyn. With the metropolitan systems being broad gauge, the mid north and south east of the state were originally laid with 3 ft 6 in narrow gauge track and these systems were closely based on British practice, as was the broad gauge system prior to 1926. Nine broad gauge locomotives plus the frame of a tenth were bought second-hand from the Canterbury Provincial Railways in New Zealand when it converted to narrow gauge. In 1922, after the SARs worst financial deficit, the government appointed American railroad manager William Webb, when Webb arrived in Adelaide with his young family, he found a railway system unchanged since the late 19th century. These attributes drove up the ratio of operating costs to revenue, lightly patronised passenger trains would be replaced by self-propelled rail cars, enabling faster, more frequent and more efficient services. He recruited Fred Shea as his Chief Mechanical Engineer and had him prepare specifications for new equipment. These were of the Mountain, Pacific and Mikado wheel arrangements,10 of each type, which became the 500,600, and 700 class locomotives. To carry the trains, the rehabilitation plan included the strengthening of track and bridges. Efficient train operations were facilitated by the adoption of American train order working on country lines and this grand building has been partially taken over by the Adelaide Casino. When the two shiploads of new locomotives arrived in 1926 they caused a sensation with the public and throughout the industry in Australia. The 500 class Mountain was over twice the size of the biggest pre-Webb engine, henceforth double heading broad gauge trains became a rarity in South Australia. The massive locomotives were unloaded at Port Adelaide and taken off the pier by horses, apart from some initial teething problems the new locomotives settled in nicely to their assigned positions. After the success of the locomotives, ten more 700 class locomotives. The 500 class was rated to haul 400 tons over the Mount Lofty Ranges immediately east of Adelaide, two years after their introduction, the class was modified by the addition of a booster engine which required replacement of the rear two wheel truck with a four-wheel truck
11.
Government of New South Wales
–
The Government of New South Wales, also referred to as the New South Wales Government or NSW Government, is the Australian state democratic administrative authority of New South Wales, in Australia. The Government of New South Wales, a constitutional monarchy, was formed in 1856 as prescribed in its Constitution. Since the Federation of Australia in 1901, New South Wales has been a state of the Commonwealth of Australia, under the Australian Constitution, New South Wales ceded legislative and judicial supremacy to the Commonwealth, but retained powers in all matters not in conflict with the Commonwealth. Section 109 of the Australian Constitution provides that, where a State law is inconsistent with a federal law, initially the Australian states retained significant independence. Over time, however, that independence has been eroded by both the proliferation of Commonwealth Law, and the increasing financial domination of the Commonwealth. New South Wales is governed according to the principles of the Westminster system, Executive power rests formally with the Executive Council, which consists of the Governor and senior ministers. The Governor, as representative of the Crown, is the repository of power, which is exercised by him or her on the advice of the Premier of New South Wales. The Premier and Ministers are appointed by the Governor, and hold office by virtue of their ability to command the support of a majority of members of the Legislative Assembly. In 2006, the Sesquicentenary of Responsible Government in New South Wales, the Act was assented to by the Queen on 3 April 2006. The following individuals serve as government ministers, at the pleasure of the Queen, the government ministers are listed in order of seniority, while their opposition counterparts are listed to correspond with the government ministers. All Opposition counterparts are members of the Parliament of New South Wales
12.
Newcastle, New South Wales
–
Located 162 kilometres north-northeast of Sydney, at the mouth of the Hunter River, it is the predominant city within the Hunter Region. Famous for its coal, Newcastle is the largest coal exporting harbour in the world, beyond the city, the Hunter Region possesses large coal deposits. Geologically, the area is located in the part of the Sydney basin. Newcastle and the lower Hunter Region were traditionally occupied by the Awabakal and Worimi Aboriginal People, in September 1797 Lieutenant John Shortland became the first European settler to explore the area. His discovery of the area was largely accidental, as he had sent in search of a number of convicts who had seized HMS Cumberland as she was sailing from Sydney Cove. While returning, Lt. Shortland entered what he described as a very fine river. He returned with reports of the port and the areas abundant coal. Over the next two years, coal mined from the area was the New South Wales colonys first export, Newcastle gained a reputation as a hellhole as it was a place where the most dangerous convicts were sent to dig in the coal mines as harsh punishment for their crimes. By the start of the 19th century the mouth of the Hunter River was being visited by groups of men, including coal diggers, timber-cutters. Philip Gidley King, the Governor of New South Wales from 1800, in 1801, a convict camp called Kings Town was established to mine coal and cut timber. In the same year, the first shipment of coal was dispatched to Sydney and this settlement closed less than a year later. A settlement was attempted in 1804, as a place of secondary punishment for unruly convicts. The settlement was named Coal River, also Kingstown and then renamed Newcastle, the new settlement, comprising convicts and a military guard, arrived at the Hunter River on 27 March 1804 in three ships, HMS Lady Nelson, the Resource and the James. The convicts were rebels from the 1804 Castle Hill convict rebellion, Morpeth, New South Wales is a similar distance north of Newcastle as Morpeth, Northumberland is north of Newcastle upon Tyne. Under Captain James Wallis, commandant from 1815 to 1818, the conditions improved. The quality of these first buildings was poor, and only breakwater survives, during this period, in 1816, the oldest public school in Australia was built in East Newcastle. Newcastle remained a settlement until 1822, when the settlement was opened up to farming. As a penal colony, the rule was harsh, especially at Limeburners Bay
.jpg)
