Vintage Australian railway film - All manner of trains - 1962

Interesting to see the automation of laying the tracks, but the big problem in my experience of long haul Aussie railways was how bumpy they were when I travelled on them in the eighties. The roads improved a lot with time, so I found the buses actually more comfortable than the trains for overnight trips.

This is a great piece of history and it is a shame many railway lines have been shut and left to rot with little vision of a rail future. It will cost twice as much to open them again. If we want a greener planet we need railways more than ever. Very sad we don’t have the older style trains anymore either. Now we have these commuter coffins where you cannot open a single window and suffocate when the air con isn’t working in summer and made in Korea.

train stations hold great history

A nice job by the railways for Australian notorious mad tennisser Kyrigos and a therapy to act normal in life and learn to behave himself. 😌

What a great vid, brought back many wonderful memories.

Thanks for uploading this video. I may have been born after the turn of the millennium, but I'm nostalgic for these good times- Australia's greatest era- one which my ancestors witnessed. Things were simpler, speech more eloquent, and hard work was all one needed to be employed in a good paying job for life.

We have lost most of those trains. And a way of life.

Ahh Australia, the land of opportunity and the free. It's 2022 now and what have you become? Tyranny is now the order of the day. Misbehave and you're placed into isolation camps.
Fight back people.

1962, sigh! My beautiful Australia. How I miss those days. Best times of my life.

I traveled from Cairns to Melbourne and back by train many, many times when I was young… on the Sunlander, Brisbane Limited, IntercapitalDaylight, Southern Aurora and Spirit of Progress

Did George get his travel free ? l bet he did, working for the railways himself !! l got free travel in the UK and Europe as l worked for British Railways for 25 years. l Travelled all round Europe for free three times in 25 years and got a 50% discount crossing the USA coast to coast !!

Not the case now l'll bet !! Trucks took over !! l bet a lot of these lines are closed !!!

Great shot of Antill Rangers Commer knocker semi at 27.09 and TNT’s R190 petrol powered or R200 diesel powered inter coming off the train and love the shot of the Wig Wag level crossing warning signals when the SA’s red hen goes thru

What a splendid film. Thank you so much for posting.

Absolutely fantastic video 👍🏻 Hopefully the railways will have its day again 😀😎🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

Fascinating in so many ways, thank you.

This guy makes a marvellous trip. Not possible today.

It took till 1970 till you get from one side to the other.

I have watched this film a number of times; and I never get sick of it!

All the passengers are white, but the people laying out the tracks are all black. What terrible history we have as human beings.

Just about all those trains have disappeared how 😞

Fascinating!
My rail experience is thus far limited to Canberra to Sydney vv.

bellissimo video.

Sad to note the Far West Express to Bourke became a bus in 1974 twelve years later.

Love the footage! Brings back memories from my early childhood. ( I think I came out of the womb loving trains! )

Thanks for that. I used to have that footage on VCR which i wore out by watching it over and over again as a child. Was great to watch it again

What a different time, lots of the work was still very physical despite some level of mechanisation, those sacks with copper ore must have weighed a lot.
Some of the locomotive classes shown have still examples soldiering on almost 60 years later, the standardisation of track gauges has not yet been completed, and in the end long distance trains have lost against the plane.
Many promises in this film have not been turned to reality, however freight traffic has seen a lot of improvements in much larger train loads, modern rolling stock with mechanical methods of loading and unloading, and using containerised transport which has eliminated a lot of that back breaking transshipment work.

Brilliant video, those were the days when we actually had a railway when pride and public service mattered and a job for life and not dollar profits. Thanks for resurrecting this classic. Gauges across the country have yet to be standardised (mentioned in the intro) as QLD and Tasmania still out of the sphere of progress. Then again, as Sir Joh would say..."Don't you worry about that!".

love the footage - must say, though, that I'm glad they don't do soundtracks like that anymore, what with diagetic sound being so much easier to record than it was then.

Ah, trains, I love how you guys post these Archive footage! Just astounding how you guys get your hands onto this.