*** THANK YOU ***

I know most of you probably sit there in your computer rooms, looking at NR class photos on the net and bashing the hankie box thinking that the quality posts appearing on this website just come to me so easy.

None of you probably give an ounce of thought to the hours I spend, slaving away on the keyboard, hour after hour, to ensure the stupidity and smut I bring forth is of a quality suitable for my very selective readership.

Lets face it, any old spark photographer could sit here and punch out a page of pedestrian gunzel porn. However I have more respect for my readership than to convey dribble to you week in and week out, I approach every new addition with the sort of style and finesse that only the Semi-Retired Foamer, and perhaps the makers of South Park, could ever hope to achieve.

It thus brings a warm tingly feeling to ones regions when an appreciative reader sends in a contribution for me to share with everyone. It not only makes me feel a little appreciated, but it saves me actually having to do much extra work for a few more days.

With this in mind I humbly thank Rob Parnell for this photo of an ALF in Perth.

I think it, more than any other photo that has appeared, pretty much sums up the feeling of your favourite blogsite - or perhaps even this one.


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~~~ WHERE IS IT ~~~

Dipping into the archive collection for another of those ever popular

'Where Is It' competitions.

Three shots of the line shown.

GUESSES:Pelaw Main Line beyond Stockrington,

CLUES:

WINNER: Chris Stratton for Berrima-Medway line. Closely followed by Robert Parnell.

Thanks to all who took a guess. Another one shortly.

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Where's Colonel !

Yes it is the internet competition you have not been waiting for!

In an exciting new idea I ripped off the "Wheres Wally" group of publishing dribble, I am now doing "Wheres Colonel".

Be the first to work out where Colonel is (the cost of the Bundy there may be a clue) and you win, well, nothing at all, except the fame of winning.

Wrong Guesses: Down the pub (Brock), Abermain Car Park (MooseTurds)

Winner:

_

-

-

## BOTANY RAILWAY LINE ##

Well it was supposed to be - But I wasn't in the mood!

Hello and welcome back to our regular archive section. Well, I call it the archive section, but it is more a way for me to bollock on about the old days and share a heap of old photos that most self absorbed gunzels would not give a toss about otherwise.

Actually given the less than fruity response, they probably don’t give a rat’s nad, no matter how it is dressed, being to busy trying to out do each other, trying to get published their photo of some of the last remaining things of interest .


Lets face it, I don’t have to be half tanked on rum to notice that there is very little left to fry the man nuggets and get the average railfan excited. It has been well over a decade since the last droplets of good ol railway interest was screwed out of the country more completely than a tourist does a young Thai in Bangkok.


In the meantime we have had the internet forced down our throat like a, well best we don’t go there, and this has certainly changed the railfan scene greatly. No more need to sit line side in wait of a possible good catch (gunzels realise I am not talking women), no more need for the personal railfan grapevine and no more need to actually have to go and meet railfans in person.

Yes it has been a great boon for railway information, but at the cost of bringing the great unwashed masses to the fore, allowing them to mix with the normal rail fan population, so much so that all the old guys have long since disappeared.
So where has the old gang gone, David Henderson, Peter Bubb, The brothers Booth and Henry, just to name a few. What about the guy that spoke to his umbrella, or the one in the black jacket for whom bathing was obviously a waste of time. Then there was the one on tours who used to carry a large stereo with him to listen to, or good ol Phil Longly, star of at least one magazine article and member of the Honda precision stunt team.

Then there were the trains. Back then you could chase electrics without being considered the mentally deficient you would be today. W, S, H and M sets were the order of the day, lovely old single deck trains of a much earlier era making the time between the all important freights even more entertaining.
Now days, should you be caught photographing a Tangara or, heaven forbid, one of those stomach evacuating Millenniums, you are looked at with a sort of contempt reserved for Denis Ferguson.

Then there were the locomotives, locomotives from a time when we took time to design them, not just put barf on to a computer screen and send it out on the rails. Then there was the liveries that came prior to that god awful Freightcorp Blue dung, that lovely Indian Red livery, not to mention the old VR and QR versions of blue. Even the Mustard Pot of South Australia was more attractive, despite it being the colour of my daughters morning diaper.

Then there are the gunzel magazines today.
I was recently horrified to hear from someone who had received a letter from a major publication suggesting that their photos may be more usable if more time was spent changing them, or more correctly, removing things like errant poles, badly located trees, unfortunate shadows.
In reality, one dosen’t need to really use any photographic forethought on the day anymore, just get whatever and change it when you get home. The time saved not thinking could be otherwise spent cruising Railpage for things to whinge and gripe about.

Why don’t we take this one step further? Come on guys, lets break out the photoshop, lets paste older shots of trains in a completely different location?.
Think of it - the possibilities are endless.
Sure that old shot of NR52 and AN1 coming through Henty was a terrific shot, even if there was a pesky tree behind it, but imagine it on the front of train rolling out of Cairns, easily achieved by lifting someone else’s Cairns shot off the net. Chuck in a few palm trees, a lovely clear sky, a drunken teenager on the game, and there you have a perfect cover shot.
Then from one photo you can be published twice.

But men, and in many cases that’s a term I use loosely, lets not just stop there, all those rumours that the 86 were to be sold to Europe, well why not let your magazine of contribution choice have the scoop shot of one hauling a load of weed through Sweden?

To hell with reality now days, reality is just so yesterday - lets piss it off.
Oh bring back the good ol days, those lineside social outings, being able to take prints/slides and send them in to magazines as taken, the needing to meet people personally to call them friends, the less bitchy pre-internet hobby and the vastly less prevalent bottom grabbing incidents than seem to occur in 2009.

This is just a personal thought or two that you probably didn‘t want to hear and will now go off and forget. I shall send it into Railway Power and Motive Digest to see if the rants of us forgotten railfan generation can get published. :-)

Now please go have a wash and check out some girlie mags - you know - girlie mags. GIRLIE MAGS, with girls in them for peets sake. A GIRL!!!!!!! The ones that look a lot like us but have different lumpy bits and are far softer to touch, assuming you can without being arrested.

Oh for goodness sake, here is an example of some girls The Colonel prepared for us earlier. "It seems they were manually checking each others tonsils and for quite some time" said a rather excited Colonel at the time.

This was supposed to be a display of 80s and 90s Botany line photos but it has got out of control. Perhaps tomorrow.
Cheers

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~~ 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!

------------

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

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