The history of the West Coast Wilderness Railway is marked by resourcefulness and frontier spirit that continues to influence the special character of the west coast today, according to Federal Group Managing Director, Greg Farrell.

The opening of the railway's full service between Queenstown and Strahan on 27 December 2002 is a landmark for the region, says Mr Farrell.

"The railway has a story that inspires us today and tells us an enormous amount about the flavour of the west coast - its hardiness, the tenacity of the people, and the way they adapted to remote and harsh conditions with ingenuity," he says. He is convinced that the west coast has the potential to be one of the most fascinating and compelling tourism regions in Australia.

The railway, along with Macquarie Harbour and Strahan as the gateway to the World Heritage Area, will help build strong, memorable visitor experiences of the region.

"When they leave the area, we want visitors                                                  to take away its imprint - the feel, the sights and sounds that create the distinctive edge for the west coast," Mr Farrell says.

The Federal Group acquired the railway last July as part of an "all points of the compass" expansion program that included purchase of the popular Strahan Village accommodation centre and Gordon River Cruises, as well as a prime beachfront site to be developed as a world-class resort at Coles Bay on the east coast.

The new holdings were added to the existing line-up of Wrest Point in Hobart and the Country Club Resort in Launceston.

As part of the Federal group's vision for the west coast, it has expanded its Wild Rivers store at Strahan to create an activities centre, making it easier for visitors to book local adventure experiences ranging from kayaking to scenic flights, jet boating, 4WD wilderness tours, and fishing and sailing charters.

It also established a Tasmanian tiger interactive display, with a thylacine skin rug as its centrepiece. Purchase of the rug was a joint venture between the Federal group, the Tasmanian Government, the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery.

"We recognise that the provision of powerful visitor experiences of the West Coast Wilderness Railway and Gordon River Cruises, hand in hand with other tourism operators, providing a wonderful range of first-class activities has led to the opening of our activity and booking centre, designed to promote the West Coast as a premier leisure destination" Mr Farrell says.

The railway will play a significant role in conveying the extraordinary nature of human endeavour and the impact of early pioneers in trying to tame a wild country, in direct contrast to the experience of undisturbed wilderness on Gordon River Cruises.

"We find a way or make it"

Never was a railway badged so fittingly.

Abt locomotive No.1 steamed into Queenstown for the original railway's official opening on 18 March 1897 bearing a shield with a prophetic inscription.

In large letters on a plaque at the front of the train, among decorations of fern fronds, wildflowers and other native plants, was the Latin motto, Labour Omnia Vincit, which means "we find a way or make it".

Although it may be more accurately translated as "work conquers all", it typified the frontier spirit of a community that valued non-conformists and adventurers, as well as the foresight of a mining company that was prepared to back them.

By the time the motto appeared on the loco the railway had already survived a litany of survey and construction challenges, financial risk, seemingly insurmountable obstacles, scandals, rivalry, and the prediction of a harsh critic that it would slide into the King River.

The original railway would continue to operate for 67 years, through natural disasters such as bushfires, wash-outs and the 1906 floods that wiped out three bridges, damaged five more and closed the line for several weeks. It would outlast capricious events such as the 1919 flu epidemic that cut the workforce and, combined with a shipping strike, led to the first recorded annual loss for the railway.

Ironically, "we find a way or make it" would become something of a catch-cry for those dedicated to restoration of the facility. In its second life, the railway survived closure of the mine, two feasibility studies that gave it the thumbs down and a battle to find funding.

Desperate times sparked bold risk

Chances are that the original railway would never have happened in the modern climate of business strategising, forward planning and risk analysis. It was a gamble from the beginning, with the odds stacked against it - impenetrable territory never before mapped, a harsh climate, a remote location and the requirement for an enormous budget to fund it.

However, these were desperate times.

The company knew that a reliable, efficient transport system was crucial for large-scale, economic mining. Without a railway to cart in heavy mining equipment and to get its ore out to the seaboard for access to markets, the fledgling Mt Lyell mine would fail.

The company, initially the Mt Lyell Mining Company but later reformed as the Mt Lyell Mining and Railway Co Ltd, was painfully aware of the shortcomings of existing packing trails blazed by prospectors in the early 1880s. On 24 November 1892 the company posted a public notice flagging its intention to build a tramway or railway. Much was still unknown about how and where it would happen but one thing was certain: the railway would make or break the company.

The "lion-hearted" company directors pressed on, says author of The Peaks of Lyell, Geoffrey Blainey:

"Fired with wild optimism by their fabulous luck at Broken Hill, they vested that same rugged, illogical faith in Mt Lyell."

The challenges came thick and fast. With no existing maps of the region, teams of surveyors headed into the bush to find an achievable route. It soon became clear that there would be no easy path for a railway as the topography ruled out one possibility after another.

The wild terrain was winning.

Meanwhile, all attempts to secure investors to finance the company and the railway were proving fruitless. The most likely source, British investors, were wary in the face of the collapse of banks in Australia and a downturn in the mining industry.

The Mt Lyell Mining and Railway Co Ltd, established on 29 March 1893, was stymied.

Hobart historian, Lou Rae, in his book, The Abt Railway & Railways of the Lyell Region, says: "Within six months of its formation the Company faced its bleakest hour".

Managing Director, William Knox, abandoned extensive efforts in London to attract investment capital and returned to spend Christmas in Australia, no doubt feeling far from festive.

He arrived in Melbourne to exciting news about an earlier discovery of an unexpected though small seam of high grade silver.

"As luck would have it this apparently insignificant seam quickly grew into a veritable bonanza and it yielded both sufficient silver and the necessary publicity to spark the revival of the Company's fortunes," writes Lou Rae.

With survey work completed, a route for the railway along the Queen and King Rivers was chosen. However, the narrow King River Gorge and its towering cliffs were not so easy to conquer and forced a deviation over a steep saddle.

The climb to the summit would be far steeper than any railway in Australia had tackled. Company engineer, Frederick A. Cutten, put his reputation at stake, recommending revolutionary technology for the section - the new Swiss patent Abt railway system, pioneered in Europe but never before tested in Australian conditions.

The company backed Cutten and made the bold choice to proceed. The railway from Teepookana to Queenstown was officially opened on 3 April 1897.

With the final link officially opened at the new Regatta Point station on 1 November 1899, the Mt Lyell Mining and Railway Co Ltd would go on to become Australia's largest mine over the next decade.
The railway, built against the odds, was earning its keep.

Harsh conditions test early workers

Many of the men who headed into the close-set west coast bush in the 1880s to make the railway a reality would pay a price of one kind or another.

While the company risked its money, the men who surveyed and built the railway risked their lives and well-being in difficult, isolated conditions.

Following in the footsteps of the gold prospectors who first opened up the Lyell area, the surveyors were the first to face the hostile terrain. Historian for the Abt Railway Online project, Kerry Edwards, said: "It was, literally, ground breaking work, as no survey had even been done of the wilderness before".

Nearly 500 kilometres of foot tracks were blazed as surveyors scoured the rugged countryside between the Mt Lyell mine and Macquarie Harbour searching for an elusive route. Survey teams returned with reports of flooded rivers; impassable mountains and rainforest so dense that the sun never touched the soil. No consensus could be reached on the final route and the company called in an independent expert, Mr C. Napier Bell, to provide advice, leading to agreement on the route along the Queen and King Rivers.

Debate on the preferred route was evidently heated and two surveyors who had argued against the King River option were sacked. They were among the first casualties of the railway.

The successful contractors, Garnsworthy and Smith, began recruiting labourers in late 1894. Most Tasmanians, aware of the conditions and the harsh climate, wisely stayed away while Victorians trekked to the west coast.

Many of the navvies had never seen such a confronting tract of country. They arrived with meagre provisions, little equipment and clothing that was not fit for the severe weather conditions, only to find a forbidding landscape.

The leeches, snakes, ice, rain and steady diet of tinned food took its toll. "It was little wonder that many returned home once they had earned sufficient money to pay for their fares," author Lou Rae says in The Abt Railway and Railways of the Lyell Region.

Taming the route a leap of faith

Taming the tortuous route from Queenstown to Strahan in the 1880s demanded a leap into the unknown for engineers, contractors and labourers.

As if the cutting edge technology of the Abt rack and pinion system - invented only a few years earlier by Swiss engineer Dr Roman Abt - was not enough, the resourcefulness and ingenuity of workers was tested repeatedly as the railway crossed rivers, pushed through steep hills and gullies, and climbed the summit to Rinadeena.

The men hauled logs over rapids to build one wooden trestle bridge after another in terrain that required 48 bridges between Teepookana and Queenstown alone. The bridges, some wedged into steep hillsides, were so extensive that they represented six per cent of the total length of the railway.

The line's engineering marvels were widely acclaimed in the media and by politicians of the day following the railway's official opening in 1897. But the gloss of success veiled a difficult, sometimes humbling, series of obstacles during the earlier 19 months of construction.

The Quarter Mile Bridge threatened to break the railway with construction work barely under way. What began as a straightforward task of driving piles through silt into the riverbed turned into an endurance challenge when no firm foundation could be reached for up to 18 metres or 60 feet. Resulting delays in completing the 240 metre-long bridge were a source of frustration to company directors.

Earthworks for the many deep cuttings were largely carried out by hand, with labourers moving thousands of cubic metres of rock and soil. One of the largest cuttings, between Halls Creek and Rinadeena, looms 20 metres above the rail line.

The Iron Bridge, installed across the King River as part of the railway extension to Regatta Point in 1899, was another test of wits. The iron truss for the 43-metre bridge was shipped from London and weighed 110 tonnes, a major problem in the days before modern heavy lifting machinery was available.

The answer lie in simple physics principles. Contractors transferred the bridge to a trestle pier mounted on a large barge that was towed across the river.

Once the bridge was in position, workers filled the barge with sandbags, lowering the barge in the water so that it could be floated free of the bridge.

Challenges came in a different form at Camp Spur, which was the main construction depot. Packhorses toiled through the bush to arrive with huge crates carrying parts for the first Abt locomotive, which was assembled in workshops on-site. It was here that the company would take its first sounding to determine if the decision to buy the Abt system was courageous or foolhardy. Fortunately, the first test of the system - on a small section of rack railway laid on level ground - proved successful.

Mt Lyell Mining and Railway Co. Ltd was the first to use rack railway technology in Australia, followed about two years later by the installation of an Abt system on a section of the Queensland Government Railways branch line to Mt Morgan in Central Queensland.

The restored West Coast Wilderness Railway is the only tourist railway in Australia using Abt rack railway technology, although a Lamella rack system carries skiers to popular Kosciusko National Park resorts including Thredbo and Perisher Valley.

Mechanical engineer and historian, David Jehan, in his book, Rack Railways of Australia, says: "The usage of this type of railway in this country has by no means been widespread. In fact, if every section of rack was laid end to end the total distance (ignoring differences in rail gauge or rack type) would only be approximately 20 kms!"

Mt Lyell's rack and pinion section was a total seven kms - more than a third of the national total.

Following the success of Abt loco. no. 1, the Mt Lyell company purchased four more Abt locomotives. Retired driver, Mick Maxfield, now living in Duncraig, Western Australia, ascribes the good working order of the "sturdy little locos" to the pride and skill of the team who maintained them.

"The foundry men who cast the bearings and various other parts, the turners who machined them, the boilermakers who made new boilers, water tanks and fuel oil tanks; the welders and the fitters who put them back together and did an excellent job, and not forgetting the drivers, firemen and cleaners. All these men were true tradesmen," he says.

Full steam ahead for entire railway

The West Coast Wilderness Railway began operating its full service between Queenstown and Strahan on 27 December 2002, taking visitors into the heart of a story of human endurance, tenacity and survival that unfolds along its route.

The 34 kilometre heritage railway was the first in Australia to use revolutionary technology of the day for its steepest sections - the Abt rack and pinion system, which tackled grades far steeper than the country's conventional railways.

The Prime Minister will officiate at an opening ceremony early in 2003.

Extension of the line from Rinadeena to Regatta Point at Strahan heralds the completion of a three-year restoration program.

Take a journey along a frontier far removed from civilisation, where people lived on their wits and relied on resourcefulness. Travel a railway that crossed a wild country, through terrain never before mapped - a rugged landscape that had tested gold prospectors, surveyors and packhorse teams for almost a decade before the line was built.

Board the railway at Queenstown or Strahan to experience the might of nature and the engineering feats required to carve a path for locomotives, including timber trestle bridges and deep cuttings barely wide enough for a train.

The re-created Queenstown Station features a café, retail store and information centre resembling a railway carriage. A high viewing area at the end of the platform is ideal for photographing the train alongside the platform.

Try your hand at panning for gold at Lynchford then learn about the renegade prospectors who opened up the Lyell area after a gold find in the early 1880s. Café facilities are also available, adjacent to the station.

Spectacular scenery includes a sweeping view of the King River Gorge and thickly forested hills and gullies along the steep Abt inclines on either side of the summit at Rinadeena.

Stroll along an easy forest walk at the lunch stop, at Dubbil Barril Station, to gain a sense of the trials of surveyors and construction workers in developing the route through dense bush, frequently boggy from heavy rain.

A restored 20 metre high wooden trestle bridge provides an ideal photo opportunity.

Lunch is available from a catering carriage alongside the platform. Dubbil Barril - sometimes written as one word in early years - evidently meant "dividing of the waters" in the local aboriginal language.

Cross the King River alongside the site of the Quarter Mile Bridge, its remains a potent reminder of the skills and persistence of early engineers and workers.

At Lower Creek Landing Station, a nearby bend in the river was an important collection point for Huon Pine logs cut by hardy piners working in the area.

Travel over the restored Iron Bridge near Teepookana, where the route makes its final run along the King River before following the curve of Macquarie Harbour to Strahan.

At Regatta Point, the Station is the original building and also features a café and retail store.

Discounts apply for those purchasing tickets on Gordon River Cruises or staying at The Strahan Village.
Bookings & enquiries: Ph 1800 628 288
Trains an escape from daily grind

The railway was the Lyell area's life support system for much of its 67 years, feeding a need for entertainment and social outings as well as economic wellbeing.

Cut off from the outside world, the miners, fettlers and their families found their days regulated by the railway.

It helped create the ties that bound remote residents in a sense of community - a steel sinew stretching to the seaboard, then beyond on Government-run railway lines to the north.

Queenstown station was at the heart of the community, pulsing with excitement and activity when the trains steamed up to the platform carrying visitors, mail, fresh milk, produce and supplies. The town was famed for its prize-winning brass bands and they pumped out rousing tunes on the platform on special occasions.

Children rode the railway to school. Honeymooners travelled its mountainous route. Almost half the 42 victims of the 1912 North Lyell underground mine disaster were transported to their final resting place on a special funeral train, led by a large procession of mourners on foot.

For those who lived in scattered bush settlements along its route and in Queenstown, the railway was a lifeline for communications. It also became an escape route when the limitations of the small town and its omnipresent circle of hills became suffocating.

This was crucial in such an isolated location. Historian Geoffrey Blainey, in  The Peaks of Lyell, says:
"When most people lived in tiny huts or two-roomed houses, when there was no cinema (except a magic vitascope that depicted such breath-taking subjects as 'Railway Train' and 'Angry Sea') when 'five distinct selections from Edison's Marvellous Gramophone' was an absorbing item at any concert, when newspapers had only four pages - half news and half advertisements, when the wireless was unknown, when railway fares were exorbitant and gardens were impossible, the people obviously had to make their own entertainment."

The Mt Lyell Mining and Railway Co. Ltd, from its earliest days, recognised the benefits in using the trains to help maintain the morale of its workforce.

The company established picnic grounds near the King River Gorge, planting flowers, shrubs, and rhododendrons that still flower today. It introduced annual picnic trains, at first to Teepookana with barges taking employees and their families to a property at the mouth of the King River, then later to the beach at West Strahan.

In later years three picnic trains usually ran, departing Queenstown at 45 minute intervals and often featuring rowdy sing-alongs. Local lore has it that the last train returning from Strahan was dubbed the 'drinker's special' - carrying those who helped empty the beer kegs provided by the company. The end carriage was sometimes known as the 'lover's carriage', for those who arrived late after lingering for different reasons. The railway was also used for school picnics and occasional Sunday outings.

The popularity of the railway failed to dim even with the 1932 opening of the first road out of Queenstown, linking the Lyell community to Hobart.

The company extended its liberal attitudes on the role of the railway to encompass a broader welfare policy aimed at recruiting and keeping a stable workforce. It was losing good miners to fields elsewhere due to the remoteness of the location, high cost of living and lack of sporting facilities and entertainment.

According to Geoffrey Blainey, the instigator of the policy - manager, R.M. Murray - was a pragmatist.

"Although Murray had the interest of the miners genuinely at heart, he resented the phrase 'welfare scheme'. 'It's not welfare', he used to say, 'it's self-preservation.' "

The company provided three social clubs, including a library and billiard table; generous subsidies to brass bands and a soldier's club. It built employee holiday cottages at Lettes Bay near Strahan, gave out free passes for its railway and went on to create a supply of cheap electricity, as well as subsidising food.

In 1963 the Mt Lyell Mining and Railway Co. Ltd became a company with a railway in name only. The railway closed but the company continued to operate without changing its moniker.

The last picnic trains travelled on 25 January 1963, with the final scheduled passenger train leaving Queenstown six months later.

Rebuilding a remarkable heritage railway

When the last engine hauling its rake of empty wagons rattled into Queenstown, virtually unannounced, on Saturday 10 August 1963, the end was nigh for what was one of the most remarkable railways ever constructed in Australia.

In the preceding months a stay of execution had been sought and a campaign mounted to retain the Mount Lyell Mining and Railway Company's 34 kilometre line, that linked Queenstown and Strahan. Some considered it could even serve as a tourist railway. However, the decision to end railway operations after 67 years of continuous working was inevitable.

The company was not prepared to inject the large sums of capital necessary to replace several larger bridges nor would it spend money on upgrading the aging fleet of locomotives and rolling stock. Instead the Company invested in a fleet of new trucks to carry the copper and pyrites over the Queenstown to Strahan Road, to its wharves located at Regatta Point.

By early December 1978, following a variety of sports induced knee injuries, a work colleague suggested to me that it was time to keep fit by taking up bush walking. Geoff had studied several West Coast maps that revealed a myriad of old tramways and railways just waiting to be explored. In fact, there was one that ran through some pretty interesting country between Queenstown and Strahan. In no time our first expedition was planned.

Luckily, the majority of the old railway formation was easy going as vehicles could navigate from both ends of the line and it was only the six kilometre section between Dubbil Barril and the Teepookana Bridge that required much walking effort. This section was overgrown and was closed to vehicular traffic, with many of the bridges appearing to be in the advanced stages of decay. The major obstacle proved to be negotiating the western banks of the King River, between the old Quarter Mile Bridge and the Iron Bridge at Teepookana.

The Quarter Mile Bridge, a magnificent trestle structure during its years of railway operation, had partly collapsed into the murky waters of the King River in the early 1970s and could not be crossed. The ensuing scrub-bash involved much crawling and scrambling up steep hills and down gullies, in dense vegetation with full packs and included an encounter with a most aggressive snake on its home territory. Nevertheless, after taking four hours to do the two kilometres, the Teepookana Bridge finally loomed in our sights. Luckily a tourist offered us a ride to Strahan in his Kombi van.

Over the next five years Geoff and I rode, walked and scrub-bashed many of the railways and tramways located amid the countless mountains and valleys that comprise the West Coast.

Walking the railways soon turned into researching the region's colourful history and seeking out photographs and maps of all the old mines, railways, tracks and towns. It was like putting together a jigsaw, as the pieces of the West Coast maze began to fit together. During the early years I was lucky enough to meet some of the truly fascinating West Coast characters, all willing to share stories and glimpses of their experiences and past lifestyles. George Smith, Shrewdy (Eric) Thomas, Jean Sarson, Philosopher (Butch) Johnson and Malcolm Powell, just to mention a few, have all helped considerably with my compilations on the histories of various events, people and places on the West Coast. Since the Centenary of the Lyell District in 1983 I have researched and written six books and numerous articles on railway, mining and tourism aspects of the area.

What was soon apparent from my West Coast research was that in its heyday the region had boasted its fair share of truly unique railways and locomotives. This fact is quite amazing given the relatively small area involved. The first two Garratt locomotives ever made came to Zeehan, the North East Dundas Tramway was used as a model for future narrow gauge lines in Australia and elsewhere, while the Abt Wilderness Railway - now the West Coast Wilderness Railway - was the first of only two Abt rack railways built in Australia.

The second rack railway was located at Mount Morgan, Queensland, and it encompassed a fairly short distance of rack line covering countryside that could at best be described as a steep paddock. Hardly a comparison to our railway that included 58 bridges traversed some of the most magnificent wilderness country in the West and served as a lifeblood to Queenstown and its surrounding mining settlements for nearly seven decades.

During the 1980s several attempts were again made to secure Government funding to rebuild the Abt, but all met with little success. Slowly, over the ensuing decade, bit by bit, the dream gathered momentum. As the proposal gained wider publicity more and more people from around the State began to realise the great potential the railway had to offer. From a personal viewpoint, I had always considered that in rebuilding the railway long forgotten aspects of our mining and railway heritage, along with the lifestyles of the isolated West Coast mining communities, could be showcased to the rest of Australia, if not the world. We are now gradually beginning to realise that there is far more to heritage than convicts and sandstone buildings.

It was with much enthusiasm and a feeling of relief that I listened to the Federal Government's 24 July 1998 announcement that Federation Funding would be allocated to rebuild the railway. I must also admit that it was with some trepidation that I contemplated whether there was sufficient expertise available to actually build the railway and restore the locomotives, at any price, given the years of neglect the engines and the formation had suffered. Another possible cause for concern was whether the promoters would seek to create a "Disney World" railway rather than focus on the true heritage and wilderness values the railway had to offer. Luckily all concerned with the project have combined to ensure the railway now provides a balanced perspective of the many heritage aspects that were once part and parcel of the line.

The railway still has much to offer and from a tourist perspective I saw few better on my Churchill Fellowship study tour of tourist railways in the United Kingdom in the early 1990s.

As for my immediate plans, I have much history to collate on the old mining towns, the living conditions and lifestyles of the region's early inhabitants as part of my university studies that are due to be finished shortly.

The brave commitment to academia followed a week in November 1994 spent collecting the old books, maps and boxes of papers out of attic stores, from within various dusty strong rooms and from around the many buildings located about the Mount Lyell Company's Mining Lease, to enable them to be catalogued and sent to the Archives Office. There was simply too much interesting material to let slip by without another story being told.

Hobart historian, Lou Rae, developed a passion for West Coast railway, mining and social history in the late 1970s. He is the author of several books, including The Abt Railway & Railways of the Lyell Region.

Restoration fired by spirit of early era

From an overgrown track bed and derelict bridges, the West Coast Wilderness Railway has made a comeback in keeping with the 'never say die' spirit of the original railway.

From the time that the 1963 railway closure was announced, many locals and other Tasmanians supported preservation of the railway as a tourist service.

In the mid-1990s, local businessman Viv Crocker and fellow railway enthusiasts established the Mount Lyell Abt Railway Society and began a campaign of fund-raising, as well as carrying out initial works on the line and promoting the railway's restoration.

When restoration work began in earnest at the beginning of 2000, supported by $20.45 million from the Federation Fund, little of the railway remained other than a section of the former Queenstown Station - converted to a supermarket before most of it was destroyed by fire - and the restored shell of Regatta Point Station at Strahan.

In three years the restoration team rebuilt original steam and diesel locomotives, completed 40 reconstructed or new bridges, made replicas of original carriages and re-created stations and associated buildings.

Two original Abt locomotives, on public display on the west coast, were stripped "to every nut and bolt" and provided with new boilers.

"It normally takes two to three years to restore a steam locomotive but we completed Abt No. 3 in less than nine months," says Nick Saunders, Managing Director of Kingston engineering firm, Saunders and Ward Pty Ltd.

"Most loco's that are rebuilt were generally made in the 1920s and 30s so the Abt loco's are probably the oldest fully working steam locomotives in the world," Nick says.

Abt No. 3 was delivered in January 2001 and has already completed more than 20,000 kilometres. Abt No. 1 was delivered eight months later.

Original carriages now run on Victoria's Puffing Billy tourist railway and the 12 carriages in use on the west coast are replicas faithful to the outline of the Mt Lyell company 'O' cars and fitted out in a range of Tasmanian native timbers, including myrtle, blackwood, blackheart sassafras, celery top pine and Tasmanian oak. Each carriage features a clerestory roof, opening up a view to steam hissing through the treetops.

Contractor for carriages and station buildings, Launceston entrepreneur Roger Smith's Honeybank Corporation, also built the Queenstown Station, modelled on the original building with its high, curved roof.

A restored turn-table was installed alongside.

Locomotives and carriages are serviced and repaired at the Carswell Park workshops, adjacent to the Queenstown Station.

Trackwork and bridges, completed by Hazell Bros, include restored wooden trestle bridges such as the impressive 20 metre high one at Dubbil Barril station. A short rainforest walk leads underneath to a viewing area, providing an ideal vantage point for photos of the train on the bridge.

The original turntable at Dubbil Barril Station has also been restored.

One of the route's most spectacular views is from the bridge overlooking the narrow King River Gorge, on the 1 in 20 grade descent from Rinadeena to Dubbil Barril.

The most notorious bridge on the original route, the costly and high-maintenance Quarter Mile Bridge, was unsuitable for restoration and its sparse remains lean in near-decay alongside its steel replacement.

The original railway took 19 months to construct from Teepookana to Queenstown and a further 11 months from Teepookana to Regatta Point at Strahan - 21/2 years in total.

Oldtimers revive Abt loco. Skills

Malcolm Powell, in his mid-80s, leaned on his walking stick as he surveyed an Abt locomotive that had been a familiar friend almost half a lifetime earlier.

For a long while he gazed at the newly-restored steam train, before clambering awkwardly into the cab.

"He rode in the cab to Lynchford, then he got his hands on the throttle and that's where he stayed for the entire trip," said Nick Saunders, the Managing Director of the firm that restored the locomotives, Saunders and Ward.

The former engine driver was at Queenstown in January last year to help induct a new breed into the mysteries of steam and in particular, the rack and pinion section of the restored railway.

It was a remarkable meeting of the old with the new, bridged by the Penguin man who died later in the year, happy that he had been the first to drive a locomotive up the newly-restored Abt section from Hall's Creek to Rinadeena.

It was a poignant moment for Nick Saunders, who knew only too well that the Abt loco's were an oral tradition, with precious little written material available on them.

"Malcolm seemed to get younger as the day progressed. When we got to the top of the summit, he insisted on getting off to check all the brakes the length of the train, which was standard procedure. His practical experience was invaluable," Nick said.

At the same time, the commissioning of the locomotives was assisted by another formerdriver. Harold (Mick) Maxfield in 1998 recorded the daily routine of an Abt driver, providing a simple yet invaluable manual for new drivers - in the hope that the railway would ultimately be brought back to life.

"I write these few notes with the intention of helping future drivers who may have not driven this type of loco before and for the people of Queenstown, for that little old loco whistle may start blowing again and populating the town one way or another. Yes, it's too late to go back to sleep", he wrote.

Now living in Duncraig, Western Australia, Mick provided detailed descriptions of responsibilities for the guard, shunter, fireman, driver and even the station master, as well as crucial loco operational directions.

"During the life of the railway, this knowledge was in the heads of the drivers so the manual was very useful," Nick said.

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