Huts in Australia’s high country have been built primarily for shelter and usually follow a standard
form: one room, one door, several windows, a roof pitched high enough to shake off rain and snow,
and a large open fireplace with a semi-detached chimney – in profile, rather like the Victorian Govt
logo.
But the Railway Carriage Hut I surveyed for Graeme Butler, DSE and Parks Victoria in April 2004 had
none of these. It wasn’t even a hut – it was a bright red railway carriage. VicRail decommissioned a large number of railway
carriages in the 1970s, and some of these can be seen on farms throughout the state, as curiosities
and sometimes as storage – I’ve seen them packed with hay, for instance.
This carriage sits on the ground at the junction of three dirt roads in tall timber country, 40 kilometres
south of Mt. Hotham, miles from any private land. It has no seats and no windows: just a huge pair of
doors in the middle of each side, with a locking bar which hermetically seals the carriage when the
doors are closed. It is clearly a freight wagon, but what sort of freight?
The curious visitor can in fact work this out. A large steel trough, suspended from the ceiling,
runs the length of the carriage internally, with a drip-tray at each end going out through the wall to
a pipe running down towards the tracks. A large hole has been cut in the trough at one end to show
a trapdoor open in the roof above. The steel walls and doors of the carriage are insulated and lined
with hardwood inside and out. It can only be a refrigeration truck in the days before refrigeration.
Did you know that in the 1890s the Railways had a large ice-works in the yards behind Spencer Street,
and could “ice” (that is, load ice into) 150-160 trucks per week? The blocks of ice were made in
crates, tilted above a chute, hosed with boiling water to loosen the blocks so they slid out. Then
they were, “…broken up and shot through three chutes into the trough of the waiting truck, which is
docked alongside …” On one day in 1925 “…no less than 40 trucks were iced”. This ice-wagon
may be the last reminder of the complex industrial transportation process between local food
processing and sale, and the 20th Century’s widespread distribution of perishables in
refrigerated road vehicles.
But why is the ice-wagon in the mountains? How did it get there? What is its significance as
heritage? Should it be assessed as a hut or a vehicle?
Heyfield Park Rangers Wayne McCallum and Peter Duncan provided some of the answers. In the late
1970s, a property owner in Dargo bought four railway carriages at a VicRail clearance sale. All
four were cold storage carriages: he wanted to put two on his property, to store tools in. Where the
other carriages are now is not yet known, but this one, at Basalt Knob, is the most remote. It may
well be the most remote railway carriage in the country. Peter and Wayne think he brought them up on a
truck, and then took them to the high country on an empty timber jinker. (Log trucks take logs down,
but are usually empty coming back – perfect for railway carriages). The weekend he drove them
up the weather was terrible: he got bogged on the main road, and asked Peter for help. Can you
imagine the size jack you would need, in mud, at night, for a truck carrying four railway carriages?
Peter says drily: “He bent my jack”.
The exact origins of this railway carriage were established by Chris Banger of the Department of
Infrastructure Transport Major Projects area. It is a T-class ice-wagon, built in 1894 – the first year
that T-wagons were made. It is a short wheel-base wagon with four axles and eight wheels, weighed
12.5 tons and was used for carrying perishables: “…milk, butter, frozen meat and frozen rabbits”.
The Victorian Railways Register shows that T101 was put into service on 22 December 1894. It was
deregistered and broken up in May 1978.
In 1909, longer wheel-base ice-wagons were built, with three sets of axles and wheels, weighing 15
tons. One or two longer wheel-base ice-wagons are still preserved – one at Maldon, for instance.
Peter de Silva, President of the Australian Railway History Society, is still searching to confirm this,
but it seems likely that T101 is the only original short ice-wagon still extant.
Its heritage significance has yet to be assessed and decided, but the opening questions still need to be
answered: Is it a hut? Is it a railway carriage? Is it best conserved where it is, or brought in to the
hands of experts, for instance, at the Williamstown Railway Museum? To be continued….
If you would like to contact Anne Sedgley with any information please email
anne.sedgley@dse.vic.gov.au