#numurkah

Forgotten Glory

Victorian Railways steam loco K181, on display in a local park in Numurkah (north-east Victoria)

Numurkah Station, Then & Now

What a difference between the early 70’s and today.

From a thriving station & yard, seeing multiple passenger & goods trains on most days, to just a through line seeing a couple of freights a week now.

The relatively modern station building remains but the yard tracks & freight buildings have all been removed.

Numurkah

My home for the first 18 years of my life.

Numurkah is located on Victoria’s Goulburn Valley line, heading north from Seymour to Tocumwal, just over the border in New South Wales

The local station was the centre of my railway universe.  Luckily I had easy access. My grandfather was the local carrier, moving merchandise from the station to the local businesses. This included “parcels” that arrived on the passenger trains, along with everything from beer to the local pubs to steel and timber for local engineering & joinery businesses that arrived on the “goods”.

The photo is typical of the station on a Sunday, from the mid 60’s to the early 70’s.

In the platform road is the “Sunday Excursion Train” from Spencer Street, complete with a blue CE van, 3 BPL cars, an air-conditioned BE car, a non air-conditioned, B or W class compartment car & a B class loco. If first class was offered, it would have been in the “non-aircon” car at the front. A noisy ride behind the B!

The Sunday train was the only time we regularly saw a B class, as the Murray River bridge at Tocumwal and the branches to Picola & Cobram were both “T & lighter”.