(In) The caboose

Might be pushing my luck with this interpretaion of The Caboose, but...

Tucked away on Tasmania's rugged west coast, the Emu Bay Railway provided sterling services to the mines, transporting their ores to the coastal port of Burnie. It had many things to endear it to railfans.

There's the name itself for one thing: amongst Australian railways the mellifluous Emu Bay Railway has a rare association with its immediate geography. The country it runs through is quite spectacular. More recently, at least until the guards vans were dropped, it maintained a willingness to welcome travellers on the daily ore trains, even if the accommodation was rather sparse and the timetable less than passenger friendly. It had a brace of snappy looking diesel hydraulics as its motive power, and it projected an air of well-maintained efficiency. It evolved an operating pattern where but one daily train sufficed, all sixty odd wagons wrapped around the mountains, led by up to nine locos!

All the while, it quietly went about its business of bringing the ores of the west coast to the port of Burnie on the Emu Bay, usually unremarked but for the citizens of the handful of towns it ran through. Today the railway continues to function in much the same way, although the vans (what Americans would call cabooses) are gone and the name itself has been overtaken by the railway's absorption into Tasrail.

While this shot may suggest I had special privileges to ride the van, I am in fact a paying passenger. It shows the guard finalising his paper work just before the empty train was due to depart Burnie for the run to the mines on 2 May 1986. While this took effort to get - look at his watch - it's 4.30am! - I think this shot is well worth it. The guard - in the caboose.

Camera: Minolta XG-M
Lens: Minolta 50mm
Film: Ilford FP4
Shutter speed: 60th
Aperture: Not recorded
Flash: Hanimex something or other

Photographer: Alan Shaw