Sunday April 7 – Tasmania’s west coast Day 1

We drove from Sheffield to Tullah, the home of the ‘Wee Georgie Wood’ railway that once served a silver-lead mine in the days when no roads penetrated the west coast.

Mount Roland near Sheffield



Mining display at Tullah – 14 inch gauge mine skips

Wee Georgie is waiting for a new boiler to arrive later this year but in the meantime services are hauled by a rare 1925 Italian internal-combustion locomotive built by Nicola Romeo in Turin.

Wee Georgie Wood awaiting the arrival of its new boiler

 

Only a short part of the old line remains but it goes through nice bushland.



Nicola Romeo loco at the terminus



Picturesque station

At Rosebery there is a memorial to the old 2ft gauge haulage at Williamsford – a man rider and ore car with a tower from the cable haulage that replaced the need for the 2ft gauge Zeehan and North East Dundas Tramway on which the first Beyer-Garratts worked.

At Zeehan we inspected the old tunnel that the 2ft gauge line to the Silver Spray Mine once ran through.

The West Coast Pioneers Museum at the old Zeehan School of Mines has a collection of locomotives and rolling stock.

Mount Lyell copper mine 2ft gauge Krauss

2ft gauge Krauss from the tramway at Boulder.



TGR Beyer Peacock 2-6-0 C1 from the isolated Strahan-Zeehan railway (L) and ex Emu Bay Dübs 4-8-0 (R).

We visited Queenstown after finding our accommodation at Strahan.



English Electric 2ft gauge electric loco from Mount Lyell



Near the Spion Kopf lookout in Queenstown.



Looking back towards Queenstown on the Strahan road.