At 5:50 AM a SAR train with 9 passengers departed Adelaide Station. The steam-hauled train headed south to Goodwood, and then over the points that put it onto the Marino line. The date was 24 November 1913. It was the first train on the new railway from Goodwood to Marino.

And so now we reach the centenary of the southern suburbs railway.

That train arrived at Brighton Station at 6:20, took on water, then returned to Adelaide. At 6:00 a goods train departed Mile End and trundled down to Edwardstown Station, and performed shunting whilst the first passenger train passed by on its return to Adelaide. After departing Edwardstown the freight continued south to Brighton, and after a short pause, climbed the bank to Marino, arriving at 7:45

Construction was still underway of the railway from Marino to Willunga , that being completed then formally opened on 21 January 1915.

To think after 100 years we are only finally getting electric trains now on it next year

Think tomorrow will see a train leave adelaide station at 5:50 AM and head up the line ? Obviously sans passengers, but with a larger than usual number of drivers.

Adelaide public transport staff on the job at 5:50am on a Sunday? A bit of realism please!

Adelaide public transport staff on the job at 5:50am on a Sunday? A bit of realism please!

Just because most services dont start till a bit later in the morning, there is staff on early. Even without special training trips or whatever. There is more to running public transport than just rolling up 5 mins before the first service. You just dont see the behind the scenes happenings. After all, your justapassenger!

But you do seem to always be the negative nancy it would seem.

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Back on topic, thanks for the info on this milestone for the southern line there 2001. It is true you learn something new every day

"To think after 100 years we are only finally getting electric trains now on it next year"

For the first 40 years the whole line was barely justified let alone electrified potential (pun).

I used the line in its peak during the 60s, peak time trains were 6 or 7 ELCs diesel hauled and standing room only at 20 minute intervals. If not a train of ECLs then 6 Red Hens with the occasional 4 car Brill consist in the middle of the day.

There is no magic in electrification that automatically draws passengers. Many cities in the US  and Europe much larger than Adelaide use diesel (Electric loco in Europe) push pull services and they seem to work and even have modern air con double deck rolling stock.

It is the service that attracts passengers not the technology. A PT system must go where people want to go when they want to go. Unfortunately Adelaide's CBD is ceasing to be the first requirement and will only become less so as new Government taxes and City Council ineptitude drive business away from it.

Poxbox3030, a good response to a previous comment.

Morning all
Ian

Off to sharpen the razor blades in my muesli.

Thanks for the memory 2001

There is no magic in electrification that automatically draws passengers.

Brisbane, 1979.  Perth, 1992.  Build it and they will come.

Brisbane, 1979.  Perth, 1992.  Build it and they will come.

It was not the electrification that draws passengers unless it is the magnetic field, it is the service.

In both Brisbane and Perth rolling stock went from, a best, substandard Red Hens to sleek modern vehicles, station facilities were dragged from the steam age to something at least 20th century and for Perth new routes were built.

At the same time the CBDs of Brisbane and Perth underwent a renaissance with major office centres being established; people needed/wanted to get to the CBDs.

Here in Adelaide we have had progressive upgrades in rolling stock such that the new 4000s will not offer that much more than the refurbed 3000s (Pox Boxes). Only a few stations have really been improved over what was there before and as for the CBD it is a dump.

In Atlanta GA the MARTA said to have got its acronym from "Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta". In Adelaide the rail system acronym could incorporate moving the unemployed and pensioners rapidly from somewhere to anywhere else. I say this not to denigrate those on welfare but to reflect the parlous state of this state, see todays Sadvertiser page 10.

Service can be provided by means other than wires over the trains.

Understand I am not against electrification just the assumption that somehow it kiss everything better.

Very interesting to read of the 100 years for the Marino line having lived for many years near the line and using the Emerson Station going to the city and return . I remember it from the single line days.
Going to St Anthony  school at Edwardstown our classrooms faced the railway line so we knew from the trains what the time was .
During holidays I used to watch the daily goods service shunt at the Edwardstown yards and some times cadge a cab ride with a friendly driver .
This was a very busy goods yard in those days and always dropped off several various trucks for collection by local carriers.
From  memory the return trip generally came back about 7.00 PM using a normal baggage carriage as the guards van .
Generally F type loco was used.Never saw any shunts to the Pengelly siding how ever, curious to know if this was ever used.
May be some one could tell me in those early days if Edwardstown  was ever used as a terminating point for passenger trains I have a vague recollection of a service around Midday terminating there . May be it was a works special from the Pengelly factory during the war years .
The rail car that followed an express about 5.45 week nights used to terminate at Edwardstown .
Would be interesting if any one had time tables for these early years
Regards Mike Smith

Mike.

I remember the F coming back with only the baggage car as the brake in the early evening. It had left its train, about 3 ECLs, in the goods loop at Marino. There was already a rake of about 6 cars from an earlier train pushed up the headshunt. I was once at Marino  to watch that movement but don't recall what happened to the loco.

I did once see that train shunting Oaklands and just occasionally an empty OF (or two) from Brighton wood yard.

I recall that a train terminated at Edwardstown, I thought it was Saturday lunch time.

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be.

Regards
Ian

Thanks for the memory 2001

G,morning All,

I lived at Marino Rocks for 30 years from 1950 and went to and from the primary school at Brighton from Marino from 1952 to 1958 in Centenary coaches hauled by either an F or a Rx steam locomotive.

As my parents had 4 children under 5 years of age at the start of my schooling, I recently asked my mother (who still lives at Marino Rocks after 68 years), did she accompany me, along with my 3 younger siblings to Brighton at the start of my schooling. She stated that she did so on the first 2 days only, after that I was on my own. She went on to say that when she and the other mothers arrived at Marino after school to collect us children, they all had to wait until the Rx was turned around. The older boys were allowed to assist the driver and fireman on the manual turntable while the remainder of us children climbed aboard the locomotive. Only after turning and taking the locomotive to the end of the coaches for the return to Adelaide would we children get off.

From the start of my schooling, every Saturday morning, after breakfast, I would go down to the rail yards at Marino to watch the shunting. After a while the crews go to know me, and, if there was no inspector on the train, most times I would be allowed to ride in the cab. They shunted open wagons filled with builders aggregate from the Linwood Quarries and and in the early years cement from the Brighton Cement Works. I would come home covered in soot, cinders and cement dust, and my mother, at the start, would scold me. As dad worked on Saturday mornings, she could not hand him over to him for punishment. After a while she realised it was futile and so gave up.

The father of a good friend I went to school with was a guard on the SAR and they lived at Willunga, so he would accompany his father on the first train in the morning from Willunga and either get of at Marino Rocks and stay at our place until it was time to go to school, or he would go to his aunt at Hove and go to school from there. A few times during my schooling, I would be allowed to stay overnight at his place, so I would accompany him with his father on a steam hauled train to Willunga, and return early the next morning.

I remember the storage of the Centre Loader coaches on the siding at Marino, and on occasions my friend would purloin (steal) a brass guard's pass key from his father and we would enter the coaches. From memory they were only stored there on weekdays.

I went for my first job interview in January 1962 by steam hauled train to Adelaide, and then by tram to Magil. My first ride in a Redhen was when I started work in 1962 to Mile End Goods siding.I would go to Marino early, and if a Redhen arrived, I would give it a miss hoping that the next train was steam hauled. Eventually, off course, now more steam engines came so I was forced to ride in those horrible rail cars. To this day I still detest them.

Ah! memories.

Regards

The rail car that followed an express about 5.45 week nights used to terminate at Edwardstown .
Would be interesting if any one had time tables for these early years
Regards Mike Smith

I have an SAR timetable book from 1958. No trains terminated at Edwardstown then. Strangely enough, the first two of the day (05.00 and 05.17) ran express through Edwardstown, with the 05.00 stopping at Emerson at 05.10 and then running express to Oaklands, Brighton and Marino, arriving at 05.31.

I agree with Ian in saying that both Brisbane and Perth have had substantial changes and modernization in their CBDs while Adelaide has suffered a decline. Historically, Adelaide was the third city in Australia with very healthy 'Head Office' (e.g. Elders, Adelaide Steamship) activity, and a substantial and diverse manufacturing base (Holden, Chrysler, Phillips, Tube Mills, White goods) and, though also Australia's most beautiful garden city was, per head of population, the most industrial in the country. Our tramway system was larger than Brisbane's and substantially larger than Perth's. When I first visited Brisbane in the early 60s, the city still had night carts calling in the CBD, while Adelaide was one of the first fully sewered cities in the world. Even in Melbourne night soil was collected in large areas of the suburbs when I lived there from the mid 50s. When I first visited Perth, the Fremantle railway had suffered closure and their CBD was a complete joke compared with Adelaide's.

All this was lost due to hostile takeovers of our businesses by such people as John Elliott, and competition from Japan due to the lowering of tariffs by both Labor and Liberal governments, with the resultant selling off of jobs for the less skilled ever since. I often wonder how we are going to support our population, burgeoning through immigration and natural growth, and who will pay the taxes necessary to support the un and under-employed.

And that's why our train timetables are very little better than in the steam days in the 50s. Yesterday, in a nearly empty luxurious N6 train substitute bus of world standard in appearance accessibility and comfort, I travelled to Noarlunga Centre to take a look at the completed electrification works. I'm glad that the trains will be back next Sunday, but I wonder how full they will be after all the pain of the re-build. I hope that they will recover lost patronage, but frequency of service is the key to their success, and that is where the availability of funds will raise its ugly head.

Just a quick message to thank everyone for their little stories. It has made for a great read and I hope a few more will be added.

It certainly shows just how much times have changed. I wish I had been born much earlier

Agreed! It's kind of like the Adelaide Remembers When of Rail!
It's just a pity there aren't pics to go with the memories.

Those of us with the memories have still got the pics.

It is just that they are in a now obsolete fromat and can't downloaded on a "modern" system.

Those of us with the memories have still got the pics.

It is just that they are in a now obsolete fromat and can't downloaded on a "modern" system.

The confusion caused by "modern" media systems can be quite humerous to those who observe some of the older population who don't understand it. A friend had one such poor victim convinced that a DVD had miniturised pictures etched onto the disc and that if you looked hard enough you could see them. The victim spent about 20 minutes holding one up to the light and studying it with a magnifying glass. I wonder what the story would be with flash memory.....

depends who was flashing!

I'm wondering what the bone in my forearm has to do with "modern" media systems?

Now, if you wanted to say it was funny, you might use the word humorous!

I too would like to thank those who have shared their memories on here.
It's fantastic to read the different responses and for me I just can't help but think about myself being there when I'm reading them.
I was born in 1979 so missed out on all of the "good stuff" in the 50's and 60's and like poxbox, I too wish I had been born earlier.
Until the standardisation of the Adel to Melb corridor in 1995, it was always wonderful to go on a couple of SteamRangers Southern Encounter trips, one of which was always the last run of the year with the parallel and double head running, every year with my Dad and younger Brother. At least my Brother and I experienced a very small part of what it would've been like during the steam era.
The best we regularly got was the Red Hens which we loved because you could hold the door open with your foot and breathe in the small amount of fresh air between the whofts diesel fumes and brake fumes. I remember being disappointed a few times when Mum took us into the city during school holidays and the train wasn't a Red Hen.

I'm wondering what the bone in my forearm has to do with "modern" media systems?

Now, if you wanted to say it was funny, you might use the word humorous!

Oops!

It's just a pity there aren't pics to go with the memories.

Fortunately there are several nostalgic gems of photos floating about cyberspace. They are not always an easy Google search to discover, but persevere and the treasure can be found. Respecting copyright I won't post images here, but I can give you the weblink. These are two splendid colour photos of an ARHS special in March 1963. It was the first passenger train to visit Port Stanvac. The new branch (Hallett Cove - Port Stanvac) had just been opened for traffic.

rxclass  : The surrounding suburban landscape here might evoke some memories for you :


http://www.westonlangford.com/images/photo/102848/

http://www.westonlangford.com/images/photo/102847/

Click on the photo for full screen size.

Those photos should shut up the tree huggers, the trees were not there in the 1960s.

I had forgotten about the shop, the stories about the owners daughter were interesting, something best not said.

Love the long tom in the consist, nothing to do with the shop owners daughter. Can't see the lead to the turntable, I think the passenger loop was extended about the time Pt Stanvac was opened. For those who may remember there was an older turntable pit at the down end of the passenger loop marked by a circle of vertical sleepers. The turntable Rx would remember came up from Willunga and was at the down end of the passenger loop.

An interesting thing at Marino was a double slip from the goods loop, goods siding to the headshunt and the turnout off the main line. The goods siding returned to the goods loop then another siding came off the goods loop leading up the hill to a loop in a reserve by Schofield Road which included a loading shed I could never quite understand. I think it was for receiving clinker from Angaston for milling at Brighton Cement works.

Before Pt Stanvac the only signals were an absolute protecting up movements to Brighton and located just up from the turnout to the Goods loop. This was protected by a permissive just beyond the down end of the goods loop. Down entry to the yard was controlled by a permissive located opposite the up entering block absolute. To release the Up entering block absolute the guard rang Brighton who then gave him the OK to push a plunger which released the signal.

Those photos should shut up the tree huggers, the trees were not there in the 1960s.

I had forgotten about the shop, the stories about the owners daughter were interesting, something best not said.

Love the long tom in the consist, nothing to do with the shop owners daughter. Can't see the lead to the turntable, I think the passenger loop was extended about the time Pt Stanvac was opened. For those who may remember there was an older turntable pit at the down end of the passenger loop marked by a circle of vertical sleepers. The turntable Rx would remember came up from Willunga and was at the down end of the passenger loop.

An interesting thing at Marino was a double slip from the goods loop, goods siding to the headshunt and the turnout off the main line. The goods siding returned to the goods loop then another siding came off the goods loop leading up the hill to a loop in a reserve by Schofield Road which included a loading shed I could never quite understand. I think it was for receiving clinker from Angaston for milling at Brighton Cement works.

Before Pt Stanvac the only signals were an absolute protecting up movements to Brighton and located just up from the turnout to the Goods loop. This was protected by a permissive just beyond the down end of the goods loop. Down entry to the yard was controlled by a permissive located opposite the up entering block absolute. To release the Up entering block absolute the guard rang Brighton who then gave him the OK to push a plunger which released the signal.

Thanks to all those who added extra information for the Marino line .
I agree with SAR526 that there used to be a service that terminated at Edwardstown on a Saturday ,but the time tables I would like to see are before the 1958 ones which I am sure would have some strange times .

Reading about the Marino line it reminds me of all the work that was carried out at Edwardstown when the duplication finally was completed it seemed to go on for ever

The Goods siding had an extra loop added so consists could do all their shunts without standing on the main line as used to happen when it was a single single operation and Edwardstown was a passing station  .

Speaking of the Rx we had a couple of favorites that used to operate the  3.15 down and returning arriving Edwardstown approx 4.15 these were 222 and 199 and it seemed the same crew worked them each day which we got to know them very well `.

These were very good times and I was very fortunate to be around to enjoy them .Pity we didn't appreciate what photos would help in later years

Still cant get any further updates on the Pengelly siding shunts and consists

regards

Mike Smith