Image: Ian Cooper FIEAust CPEng(Ret), Engineering Heritage Tasmania, Engineers Australia shows off the International Heritage Marker at Lynchford.
The West Coast Wilderness Railway (WCWR) has been awarded with Tasmania’s first-ever Engineering Heritage International Marker.
The WCWR is the restored version of the original Mt Lyell Abt Railway, built in 1896 to carry copper ore from the mine in Queenstown to the Port of Strahan.
The recognition of the railway as an engineering feat of global significance is expected to boost its popularity and increase passenger numbers.
The heritage attraction will welcome 30,000 passengers this financial year – 17 per cent more than the previous year.
Engineers Australia, General Manager – Tasmania, Dr Vicki Gardiner said the award recognised the engineering excellence of the construction of the original Abt Railway.
“The Abt Railway Restoration Project was previously recognised as a recipient of an Australia Engineering Excellence Award in 2001 and the inaugural Colin Crisp Award in 2005,” Dr Gardiner said.
“But this Engineering Heritage International Marker Award is of even greater significance, being one of only seven in Australia.
“Constructing the original Abt Railway through rugged terrain was a major engineering achievement which delivered economic and community development to the West Coast of Tasmania.
“The railway was the first example of the improved rack and pinion system, and has the longest running steam-driven Abt locomotives operating in the southern hemisphere. Many of the original engineering features are still visible, including the Iron Bridge over the King river, Huon pine culverts, and original rock retaining structures.”
For 50 years, the groundbreaking rainforest railway provided the only link between Tasmania’s copper mining powerhouse, Mt Lyell, the rest of the state and export markets via Strahan’s port.
West Coast Mayor Phil Vickers, a former general manager of the railway, said the project was remarkable, even by today’s standards.
“The award is well deserved and it should reap benefits down the line,” Cr Vickers said.
The 23km of railway between Teepookana on the King River and Queenstown was built mostly with pick and shovel.
Ian Cooper, a member of Engineers Australia’s Engineering Heritage Tasmania (EHT) Committee, said the railway was rated as the state’s most challenging engineering project.
“When surveyors first went out into the almost impenetrable bush to plot out a route, the Mercury correspondent of the day described it as a ‘superhuman effort’,” Mr Cooper told attendees at the official ceremony at the ghost mining town of Lynchford, south of Queenstown.
The 23km section was completed in just 19 months, including 26 trestle bridges.
Mr Cooper said the railway, first named in honour of Carl Abt’s then revolutionary rack and pinion system, was an “outstanding example of turning engineering heritage into a tourism attraction”.
“The Abt system was cutting-edge technology,” he said.
Normal railways rely on adhesions and are limited to grades of one in 40 or flatter. The West Coast line involved much steeper grades of up to one in 16 which could only be climbed by a rack railway.
The Mount Lyell Mining Company began operations in Queenstown in 1892 and ore was transported by Strahan by bullock train. When gold was discovered in Lynchford the State Government approved a railway to be built and in 1899 it opened with much fanfare.
The railway continued to provide the only access to Queenstown until 1932 when a road link from Hobart was completed. Increasing maintenance costs and better access from the north saw the railway lose its significance and it stopped operating in 1963.
In the 1990s, the West Coast community started a campaign to reopen the railway as a heritage tourism attraction. The Howard Federal Government put up $20 million with more money from the state government and private investors such as Roger Smith, who was awarded the first contract to operate the railway.
A. Mark Thomas
M&M Communications