~~ YE GRAND OL PICTON ADVENTURE ~~

* A Tale Of Two Colonels *

It is indeed funny how times change, how differing events in our lives and differing interests lead us down differing paths of gunzel interest.
The section of railway from Menangle to Bargo was once where I could almost be found weekly in search of ALCos and other older locomotives of lesser manufacture. Indeed Friday nights were usually spent with a group of friends hanging around Menangle station watching the 'passing parade' (a wanky term I know) of freights heading north and south. Sometimes we were even treated to a shunt of the long removed milk siding on the up side of the line.
As we continue our retro series of photos there will no doubt be more than one look at the area I once classed as my territory, but for now we look at my first return for a very long time.

2-10-2009

In more recent years my usual dribbly locations of choice have been alongside the Sydney goods lines, or, far more enjoyably, around the beautiful Hunter Valley.
Both give great opportunities from intense rail action, but both have pretty much become the greatest hack (another wanky railfan term) spots you could imagine. This can usually be gauged from the pantie bursting amounts of photos sent to the editors of the local railway magazines, all of whom could probably retire should they be offered $1 per shot recieved.

With the 'World Famous Colonel' moving his fluffy caboose from Sydney to the more fresh and enjoyable Picton, I again find myself with reason to return to my former haunts on a regular basis.
There is certainly a lot less trains to be had, while even the hornbag photography is very thin on the ground, but the chance to regularly remove myself from humanity and again enjoy the countryside is just to much to resist.
With Colonel still needing to transfer a vast amount of his succulents to his new residence, I offered use of my body to help him take a car full down in return for a day full of gunzel activity, well the type that does not involve fluffy rodents or toilet cubicles anyway.

So beware southern locals - your peace and quiet will soon be no more, while your liquor stocks will be greatly depleted!

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Some things never change in Picton. In time honoured tradition our arrival was met with the end of a train screaming through the raped remains of Picton yard, wasting little time with its journey north.

Colonel reverses course and gives chase to NR39 NR29 NR4, not catching the rear of it at Maldon Curve, we had already given up any idea of

beating it to the road bridge.

"Take the Menangle Road Colonel"!

The overcast morning light was crappy at best and we settled on a cross field shot of it not far beyond the turnoff, the short road distance

giving us a small time advantage.

Colonel susses out a photo location!

In need of a breakfast feed, the Colonel suggests a greasy shop in Thirlmere that makes things as delightfully unhealthy as the good ol days.

A brief look at the Thirlmere railway museum revealed a

sight that upset the Colonel so!

"Look its that flamin Thomas The Wank Engine all over that poor engine"!!!!

After some time trying to calm Colonel down, we took a look at

the station buildings and surrounds.

Soon we were off to a location above Picton for what was to be a quiet

chat while awaiting anything that came along.

The excitment mounted with every passing moment, the rail traffic so intense you would have needed to be there to believe it could be true.

Even on the up the trains never stopped screaming through, making it

incredibly hard to choose which way to face.

BUT THEN IT HAPPENED

THE SILENCE IS VIOLENTLY SHATTERED!

We are approach by Colonel Harland Sanders, famously known for his eleven secret herbs and spices, but today full of endless stories of railway adventure.

Who should he pick to squeeze 10 hours of conversation into one? Who other than our grateful Colonel Chunder, who was already nursing a migrane.

"Quick, lets get out of here and go down to Picton Colonel"!

Colonel Sanders had not finished and even leaned inside the Colonel-Mobile as we started the car and started edging forward,,,,,,

AGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

8152 on an up cement bound for Maldon!

Sadly the lack of trains had made us lazy. We were checking the laptop for information on the RTM when this monumental lashup caught us by surprise.

NR49 NR108 NR30 NR101 on an up container train, 30 being the last of two originally painted in Aboriginal art.

Better luck with NR85 and 45 headed in the other direction under a

heavy shower of foamy excitment!

Then yet another flamin railcar!

Just in case once wasn't enough!

Despite another railcar being due, we decided to go grab a bite and then head on down to Picton station to see if the staff would share some train running knowledge with us.

Sadly the woman in charge was less helpful than her male counterparts and we had to resume playing the time old waiting game.

"GOOD GOD COLONEL, LOOK WHO IS HERE NOW"!!!

A fast exit, by walking around the whole block, saw us

safely in the car and headed back to Thirlmere via another road,

a brief amount of time spent checking the spot out.

8143, sporting the efforts of some human vermin, passes on a down wheat.

RAIL TRANSPORT MUSEUM - THIRLMERE

Having consulted the laptop we discovered there was to be a 5pm departure of an empty set bound for Sydney Terminal and a long weekend rail cruise.

Guessing they would probably be preparing for the run, our last call of duty for the day was to head back to the museum and obtain whatever snaps were possible between the ever increasing rain showers.

D1 was found shunting, while 44211 4916 4803 and 4306 were sitting at the station awaiting departure time. Many shots were taken as so many memories of earlier gunzel times came flooding back in a tsunami type wave.

What started out as a rather depressing day soon turned into somewhat of a boost to my ever growing return of railway interest.

Could the 'Semi-Retired Foamer' be coming out of semi-retirment?

As darkness, and the threat of trouble from the wife, drew closer we sadly bid farewell to Thrillmere and headed back to the freeway via Picton.

AS we really had a good 20 minutes before we had to leave, it was decided to try our luck on the road bridge near Maldon, just in case something good came along!

CRAP!

Anyway we will be spending a lot more time around Picton and the Southern Highlands in coming months, perhaps even on some sunny days.

Tally Pip

12681

~~ CORRESPONDENCE ~~

Hello one, hello all. Well I assume there is more than one, at least going by the site hit numbers.

I have to say that to huge amount of feedback has been awe inspiring and has certainly encouraged me to continue the series of old shots, I thank the BOTH of you.

One certainly has to spend a lot of time finding, scanning, preparing all the photos for the net, while smutty comments like you find here come only after years of practise - its not an art anyone can achieve.

Still if at least one shot raises one pantal bulge a year, then indeed it has been worth it.

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GUNZEL GALLERY PT1

I think I still have the photos from that day somewhere in the fridge.I'm surprised a photo of Jacob or Mr English isn't on here.

Huggies - Queensland

Hi Huggs,I have no pictures of Jacob, however a shot mof Shakey would have to turn up eventually :-) Especially some quality stuff from that day around Nambour and North Arm......

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BRAD'S ARCHIVE - BROKEN HILL and WALLANGARRA

"Perhaps Google Broken Hill to source further info on Broken Hill."

You are really trying to stress me out with using two lots of total wankerwords in the one sentence are you not?English translation..."Google" how I hate that...search, find etc on the analnet.."source"...look, search..see above..locate, look for, track down, examine, find....using such pathetic generic terms does not qualify anyone for a 6 figure salary, yet, tragically, today it does!Any looser who can dribble wankword bingo and really believe it, does!Bollocks.

The Colonel - Sydney

Love you Colonel, you are like a male version of our Ferlie.

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NEATH WEEKEND PT2

I'm surprised Jason didn't drag Jacob along.

Huggies - Queensland

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~~ THE GUNZEL GALLERY ~~

Presented by: Cooties

When your a fulltime railfan you spend plenty of hours lineside and at gunzel special occasions, thus it is obvious that over time you will meet many fellow fans with similar interests.


Of course all people are different, so some that you meet become life time friends, some an occasional aquaintence, some purely are pains in the bottom, while many just want to play with your bottom.


OH YES, you may laugh, but you show me a railfan than can't tell you a scary story of a penis predator and I will show you a liar. They come in all shapes and sizes, not to mention all different types of railfan or even bus gunzel interest.


Thankfully the better mates have way outnumbered the loonatics, well perhaps not 'way', but they are outnumbered.





Many shots of these people over the last two decades were recently found and tonight we start a series, sharing the memories, sharing the fun, forgetting the violations.

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What better a way to start than with my brother Woodrow,

the nomad of the railfan hobby.

There ain't many places around Australia that Woody has not

lived including good ol Sydney.

Here we have Woody again, seen during the party following

my first son's christening.

Many people are surprised to learn he has a real name, Daven Walters, and with him is SuperX, father of fellow foamer MrX who appears below.

Strawb was certainly an interesting character.

He has since disappeared into the mists of time.

Here we have good ol Woody again, this time he is seen with Proserpine (Queensland) identity, David Rowe (aka Rowie, Sugarbush and Sugarpubes).

This shot was taken during our 'Operation Hurricane' trip where we netted well over 200 cane locos in a two week period.

THE WORLD FAMOUS COLONEL

Well what can we say - there is nobody that comes close to the Colonel, both for his unique views on the world and his record breaking

consumption of alcoholic beverages.

A self proclaimed 'Feral Backpacker', he has travelled to most parts of the world in a serious effort to spread his word of gloom, doom and strange sex practises.

Colonel is worshipped by many and is the first railfan to have had a church set up in worship of him (see FACEBOOK).

MrX, also occasionally known as David Xuereb, is seen here during a chase of 4306 4490 and 4520 from Sydney to Brisbane and return via the now closed Murwillumbah line.


Twas a young, and somewhat pissed, MrX taken at my sons christening.
He was still some years away from discovering pure blondes, both
the beer and two legged types.

Ahhhhh every now and then you reach a historic moment in your railfan career, and so it was on this day opposite the Redband locomotive depot that my good mate Paul Henderson become Huggies.
WHY? Well I will leave that to readers to find out or Huggs to tell you himself.
Haven't seen ol Huggies for a long time, hopefully be able to catch up again soon.

COMING SOON: Brad's Archive returns with a look through the Port Kembla steelworks railways before Bluescope moved in and screwed them over.

12555

Hello ferals, foamers and regular members of society who have managed to stuff up and find themselves on my website.

I recently was shovelling through the crud I call an archive in search of things Philippine related, when low and behold I come across a couple of boxes of photos that I haven't seen in well over a decade.

The boxes are from an era that I gave up cataloguing and thought it would be a damn sight easier just to shove them altogether in boxes and push them to the bloody side. After all, I was getting married, and you all know whats on the mind when your getting married hey, heheheehehehe, yes, hmmmm, well some of the railfans may know anyway.


The boxes contain older trains shots, as well as piles of shots of people I've known and places I have been.

While rooting through them I had one of those rare good ideas, I could do a serious of them on the website. I mean they are no bloody good to anyone here other than the occasional cockroach that tends to treat them as a dump for its faeces.


Thankfully the novelty of life has long since worn off and I have nothing better to do than catalogue these photos finally and share them with anyone who gives a left testie about old railway photos.

I am not a selfish prick, like so many others, so if by chance something may be of use for an article, book, or just a general whinge to some railway publication, please feel free to ask. I am not going to sodomise you for doing so.


Where I am able, I shall try to fire up the decaying memory and share any stories behind the photos, why I was there, who I was with. I suppose, in many ways, it will be just like those life stories that super stars write, and like them, I am sure nobody will give a right toss.


Thoughts, comments and additions are always welcome - should you have the time.


Cheers

Brad

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WALLANGARRA

Its a name guaranteed to raise tent shapes in almost any railfan's durps, a huge yard, dual gauge, border station for the NSW and Queensland Railways. Even from a modellers viewpoint it is an awesome subject, having been attempted as a layout a few times, but as yet I am unaware of anyone who has completed the feat.


By the time I got the shots above I had already been through 'The Garra' on a few occasions, but on this 90s day we actually spent the afternoon covering the place for the purposes of our own attempt at a HO scale exhibition layout.

We didn't intend to get here, actually we departed Brisbane in the early hours to go to Toowoomba, first to check out Willowburn depot, and then go to a local model railway open day.


The model exhibition was not all we had hoped for, sort of like the first girlfriend when she tells you she is waiting for marriage before doing the SPECIAL thing, so we decided to check out the Millmeran branchline. Headed south, we managed to cover it all before lunch and, following much discussion found ourselves penetrating deeper into the cavity of south Queensland, our destination being the Texas branch.


Texas itself must have been an interesting yard, comlete with triangle.

If I recall correctly, the station building still existed at the time of our visit. I remember walking across a field with MrX to photograph a old railway building, then leaving in a hurry when a bull started its approach with a look of hate on its face. Despite the possibility of a severe bovine violation, I am sure we obtained some photographs and these will likely surface eventually.


With the afternoon getting on, we again set sale, this time into NSW again, then along the border to Wallangarra.

Thankfully daylight was still plentiful and the next 3-4 hours were spent combing the yard, photographing, discussing and occasionally letting out a strangely erotic grunt when something of interest appeared.

All to soon we were headed back to Brisbane, rabbiting on endlessly about the plans to build the Wallangarra layout, a layout that 13 years later still ain't happened.

BROKEN HILL

God knows what year this was, it was in the 90s and it was part of a two week triangle trip from Sydney to Port Augusta, Whyalla, Adelaide,

Melbourne and back to Sydney.

Have done this run a few times, this trip being with one Bob Gioia (aka alco4833).

I, ahhhhhmmm, buggar. Sorry am having a bit of a rum block.

Perhaps Google Broken Hill to source further info on Broken Hill.

More random shots coming soon.