NSW railway stations are full of many interesting, funny and sometimes hard to believe they could happen type stories of the past..... Here is one such event. THE DAYS OF WASHING ELEPHANTS ON RAILWAYS LINE ARE OVER NSW rail history has many interesting untold stories. Here is one which i doubt many would know about, as told to me a few years ago by my mother. My mother used to live in western NSW in the 1940s to the late 1950s. In her travels she used several different rail lines between Sydney and Hillston when she regularly travelled to school in Sydney. She fondly recalls the CPH rail motors, diesels and steam locomotives on journeys such as the Riverina Express, Temora Mail and very occasionally the Silver City Comet - only if there were floods in north/central western NSW and it would be diverted at the Roto Junction and head to Griffith. On one hot day in the summer school holidays during the mid 1950s, the steam train my mother was riding in stopped endlessly at Narrandera railway station. The train had 3 compartments in mums carriage full of men who had been celebrating long and hard and they were lying all over the place...... dead drunk or noisily stomping up and down the corridors. The guard was nowhere to be seen. All there was was a steam locomotive puffing soot as it stood still doing nothing. It was so hot the windows in the carriages had to stay open. After an hour or so of standing still and no information, concerned for her connection at Griffith to Hillston and home, my mother got up to go and look and see why the steam train was just parked in the yard for no known reason. As she went to the door to peer out the slide down window in it, one of the drunks asked what she was looking for. She said she wanted to know why the train was not moving on. The drunk said ....It is ok love.....they are just washing an elephant. My mother recollected that she just looked at him like he was mad and went and put her head out the door. And............. out in the railway yard THERE was a huge elephant.......... being washed and splashing around under the water tank. It was being cooled off by the water column........ It turns out that across from the yards was a circus tent.... the circus was in town that week. Eventually the elephant was done with the water and finally the train that my mother was on.....steamed off towards Griffith......... with passengers still wondering ...did they really see a elephant??. So life in the country could at times, be quite interesting and different to what city people expect it to be.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Dec 2014 03:27:26 +0000