a selection from my childhood.. all these trains were still in service (although not for much longer) when these were taken.

While most states in Australia had pretty much dieselised their railways during the 60's, the New South Wales government railways, having the largest system in the country, and over 1500 steam locomotives, took the longest to totally replace steam power: while the process began in the mid 50's, it took until christmas 1972 until steam was to all extent finally finished in the state, although 6042 lingered on until early march 1973. These photographs, together with many feet of super 8, and 1/4 reel to reel tape were my parents attempt to capture the last few years of service.

Steam power remained for a few more years on a few private lines, but as industry closed, or changed from rail to road or diesel haulage these too secumbed over the next decade: the last user of steam power was Coal and Allied, the inheritors of the great coal empires of the Hunter valley: they contined to use steam power on the South Maitland railway until 1984, and the truncated J&A Brown line from Stockrington to Hexham until the end of 1987

Of course there were survivors: the Rail Transport Musuem was established in the 1960's, and retained probably the most diverse collection in the state. Other museums and collectives were permitted to form and purchase condemned locomotives from about 1973 (which is why the current Zig-zag railway does not use ex NSW stock: when formed in the late 60's early 70's it was not permitted to buy locos and rolling stock from NSW - not to be beaten the group looked elsewhere, and ended up with mainly ex Queensland and South Australian stock). As a result, a number of the locomotives seen here have ended up being retained in places as far diverse as Dorrigo, Cowra, Canberra, together with one or two scattered individuals in parks around the state.

The file name is the date in reverse ie century year month day, and sequence number

Originally these slides were scanned on my canon d1230u flatbed. I've since started rescanning them on a FS4000 film scanner - these later scans are identified by the prefix 's' before the date