The following 1988 photo from Gordon Smith's archives shows the railway station at Black Mountain north of Armidale on what was once The Great Northern Railway.
It still distresses me that the Sydney Government should have first stopped trains, then closed and failed to maintain what was once the main railway north. You see, as time passed it became harder and harder to do anything about it.
Call me sentimental if you like, but "hard headed" - I have inserted the italics advisedly - economic decisions that ignore history, sentiment and the the possibilities of future changes are not always sensible.
The Queensland Government has at least kept its part of the line open.
It is no coincidence that Queensland has been far more effective than Sydney in promoting its country rail system. The Sydney lot see rail lines as just transport, Brisbane as transport plus tourism. This is part and parcel of Sydney's failure to develop an effective tourism branding strategy that I have written about before.
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