Upper Yarra locals, historians and train enthusiasts celebrated the 60 year anniversary of the iconic Warburton railway’s last ever service.
The special train run by the Australian Railway Historical Society from Flinders Street to Warburton – and return – on 1 August 1965, was a formal goodbye, the regular passenger train service having closed on 13 December 1964.
Railway historian and author Nick Anchen said while many railway lines around the country had a celebration for its last service, nothing matched the sense of occasion that surrounded the final train from Warburton.
“There was 500 people on the train and I think there was another 300 people on the waiting list to get on the train.
“Hundreds of hundreds of people were following it by car, waiting in all the different towns and level crossings along the line and in Warburton itself,” Mr Anchen said.
Mr Anchen is the author of Whistles Through the Tall Timber which told the legacy of the Warburton, Powelltown and Noojee railways.
He said the send off was quite emotional as many Warburton residents came to terms with the loss of the railway that practically shaped the town to how it is today.
“It caused a lot of sadness. There was a lot of people crying when they train left Warburton.”
Pictures from the last day show legions of Warburton locals from all walks of life crowded by the side of the railway and a brass band with its instruments at rest.
One report from the day, taken from a Star Mail article in 2015, recalled “many tearful faces among the large crowds who farewelled the last train”.
“Especially as the ARHS Special steamed out of Warburton to the tunes of Will Ye Nay Come Back Again and Auld Lang Syne played by the local brass band amid the deafening sound of exploding detonators,” the report continued.
Mr Anchen said the Warburton line’s picturesque scenes meant it was dubbed the name, The Puffing Billy of the Broad Gauge – a nod toward the Puffing Billy’s narrow gauge tracks and its similarly beautiful sights.
The Warburton line begun in Lilydale, where it would struggle up a steep incline to reach Mount Evelyn, before calmly weaving through pastoral farm land down to Wandin.
As it moved past Yarra Junction, a canopy of deep green mountain ash forest engulfed the train, before it finished off the final stretch to Warburton, accompanied by the soft trickle of the Yarra river by its side.
The Warburton line opened in 1901 where it served the local timber and fruit industries.
“There was a tremendous volume of timber coming through the line. It was Victoria’s number one railway in terms of volume of timber traffic by a considerable margin,” Mr Anchen.
The timber industry would become the economic backbone of the Upper Yarra, bringing in jobs and money to the townships in the region.
But, various factors such as improved roads and the invention of plastic contributed to the decline of the railway line, where it would eventually close in the 1960s.
Mr Anchen felt the Warburton line didn’t receive as much appreciation as it should get today.
“They just look at it as being ancient history, and a nice place to go for a bike ride or whatever,” Mr Anchen said.
But, he was happy that the railway line’s original formation had been preserved as some other decommissioned railways had lost its original path completely.
“I’ve had a look at lots of the old railways around Victoria, and some of them are virtually invisible in parts, which is really kind of sad, because that history has just gone completely.
But with the Lilydale-Warburton Rail Trail following its original formation, Mr Anchen was appreciative the line was acknowledged in some capacity.
“Railways were the framework or the scaffolding on which the whole society was built.
“It was extremely important to the economy and without railways, areas couldn’t really have been successfully opened up and settled.”
