Scrapbook Memories (Part 1)

Star down under.:
David, reliable information seems to be hard to come by.
RM 28, later renumbered RM 16 is the only fleet number that appears in a search, including Crossley. The odd thing, that was an Inspection Car/General Manager’s personal car. It was an International truck chassis with a Napier car body mounted. Queensland Rail bought a number of petrol powered AEC truck chassis, that were converted to rail motors. Most of these were later converted to Gardner power.
By the mid 50s to the 60s, the Red Rattlers (RMs) were superseded by the 1800 class, stainless steel with royal blue trim front and rear, 1900, stainless steel with royal blue trim front, rear and sides and 2000 class, polished stainless steel.
Is it possible that your charabanc was operating on the 2’ gauge, cane train network?
We’re you working at the Farleigh Mill?

As you will have guessed, my memory is sadly lacking on this subject, but there is at least 1 thing of which I am certain. Definitely not the narrow cane gauge, this was to me the normal standard gauge which I think was common in Queensland at the time (I think by the 60s the states might have all been unified because I travelled on the Aurora express sleeper from Melbourne to Sydney and don’t remember being woken up in the middle of the night by my carriage being lifted from one chassis (Vic, broad) to another (NSW, standard) at Albury, which used to be the case before). Plus this line was not part of the canefields setup, it was a separate one serving the general population of all the small stops along the way.

The other thing is that I have never heard of Farleigh Mill, but then when I was cutting cane I wasn’t actually at a mill of course. I can’t even remember the name of the mill that I did work at with the Bedford tipper, which was a different place and time. I now believe that that mill must have been within reasonable striking distance of Townsville because I spent my weekends at a house I rented with a mate near the beach there. How I got back and forth I don’t remember, not by railmotor though and probably collected and re-delivered by my mate who had a Ford ute, and he, a brickie in a state that hadn’t yet really discovered bricks, was not working. He was offered work in the back country building with blocks and needed a mate to come with him labouring as part of the package, but we declined (too far from the beach :laughing: ).

From what you say above I wonder if one or some of the AECs were rebadged as Crossleys for some reason. I must have seen a Crossley badge or at least name for it to be in my memory. I remember it being dark in colour so perhaps Royal Blue would chime with that.

I can only offer passage of time and extreme age as an excuse for my vagueness. I am now thinking that, although the vehicle and its running gear are firm in my memory, I may have used it on a few occasions travelling out to jobs while registered at the Mackay Labour Exchange, rather than a daily run to work once a job was found. This is because of my various accommodations. At Sarina I had a site caravan, at the mill with the Bedford I had a room on site and, when cutting cane we had an old house in a section of the fields. Not in danger of the flaming fields because we were cutting raw cane for supply to the lab for testing. Not such hard or dirty graft (burnt cane) as the cane gangs but in many ways harder because raw sugar cane is covered in tiny hairs (called hairy Mary, burnt off before harvesting) which got on the skin and was a terrible irritant.

Sorry, lots of useless disjointed meanderings and no hard facts to go on. :unamused: :blush:

Edit: Just had an extensive read about gauges in Australia and what I said about unification by the '60s was complete rowlocks, it apparently took much longer, even into this century. However, I am immovable on the non canefield gauge of the railmotors in Queensland. :wink: :laughing: