Introducing New England's railways

In Tourism, content & the texture of New England life, I used New England's railways as one example to make the point that New England tourism was constrained by lack of information (and imagination!). In a comment, Mark wrote:

Thanks for the railway link Jim. You have stirred something up inside me.

The railways are an excellent way of drawing tourists from everywhere such is the emotion of steam and rail travel.

I've been doing a little research on Hunter railways and didn't realise until now that there is so much being lost with old lines and railway buildings lying in ruin.

Imagine the reopening of the Great Northern Line from its original terminus at Newcastle and running steam(or diesel) services all the way to Wallangarra.

In fact, if you visit this site, you can see old and present photos of old stations etc. http://www.nswrail.net/lines/show.php?name=NSW:main_north

Sadly, after the Hawksbury River bridge was opened, the Great Northern was changed to the Main North Line and Sydney stations added. You could say that since that bridge was built, the political, industrial and economic fates were sealed since the line terminated in Sydney rather than Newcastle. Newcastle was branch lined and its CBD was forever doomed which we still see to this day.

My home station of Lochinvar is one of the oldest of the Old Northern Line and was once the terminal. This station was demolished a few years after it lost its station master in 1983. After standing for 123 years it was demolished! Imagine an important part of rail history being demolished in Sydney? I'd better stop now.

Now in this comment, Mark raises a number of different points. Here I want to deal with just one, a follow up to my post.

In his post, Mark said in part: "I've been doing a little research on Hunter railways and didn't realise until now that there is so much being lost with old lines and railway buildings lying in ruin."

Now this links to my point about the absence of consolidated information about New England's railways that can be used, among other things, to plan a trip. That information could also be used to argue for preservation and development of the base remaining.

As a first step, I have updated my New England Railways label on this blog. This simply provides better access to past posts that I can then use for update purposes.