Silverton Train & Museum: Ron visits Broken Hill in the Outback of New South Wales

For many Broken Hill families the railway station in the heart of town was the link to the outside world. The Sulphide Street station was the starting point for thousands of miners and their families as they embarked for summer holidays in far off places like Semaphore, Largs Bay and West Beach.

"The Silverton Tramway Company operated a passenger train every day until the Second World War in 1945," explained Ron Carter of the Broken Hill Railway Museum. "Every day in and out to Adelaide and numerous special trains. At Christmas time we used to shut the mines down for a month and everybody would pack up and go to Semaphore. They'd have three divisions of the Adelaide Express and on the Friday night the mines closed you'd move something like five or six thousand people down to Semaphore."

They moved them on steam trains and later diesel on a railway line, which became one of the most prosperous in the world. The Silverton Tramway Company was a private concern, which first ran trains from the mining town of Silverton in outback New South Wales to the South Australian border and later to and from the massive silver, lead and zinc mines of Broken Hill.

It was not without it's problems though. The Broken Hill Railway Museum has ample proof of the many derailments between Broken Hill and Cockburn in South Australia. But ultimately the line was responsible for the carting of millions and millions of tonnes of high-grade ore across the border to South Australia instead of New South Wales.

The ore delivered to the border by the Silverton Tramway Company and then hauled by South Australian Railways to Port Pirie meant Port Pirie would continue to grow. It was a classic case of Sydney's loss being South Australia's gain.

"We had virtually no connection with Sydney up until 1927. This railway company started in 1888 so the natural connection was to South Australia and all our food and beer and milk and everything was delivered from South Australia to Broken Hill on the narrow gauge railway." Said Ron.

It explains why the Town Hall clock is set on South Australian time and why many in this remote outback mining town read the Adelaide papers and follow our footy teams. The train line started in Sulphide Street, 320 miles from Adelaide and was run by a group of enterprising businessmen who capitalised on Broken Hill's wealth and isolation.

"It was the only way in and out of Broken Hill until the 50s. There were no bitumen roads; there was no other way to travel. The railway was the only connection and over three million passengers moved through Sulphide Street to South Australia over that 82 years," Ron said.

Ron proudly showed us a steam engine that played a big role on his life.

"This is a Bay of Peacock 'Y' class steam engine," he said. "The Silverton Tramway Company had 17 of these little fellers and they did the backbone of the work on the Broken Hill mines and on the main line to Cockburn. They were a tremendously popular little loco called Moguls."

Ron Carter was an enginemen on this little baby for twenty years. Now he's a museum volunteer and she's a museum piece in a fascinating collection of railway history each piece with it's own story to tell.

"It was just impossible to stop. The driver would assist the fireman in stopping by reversing the locomotive and trying to make the old girl go backwards when you were going forward!" laughed Ron.

The Bay of Peacock 'Y' Class along with all the other steam and diesel giants of the Silverton Tramway Company are to be found in the Broken Hill Railway Museum in Sulphide Street. It's open daily.

Broken Hill Railway Museum
Sulphide Street, Broken Hill
Open Daily

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