The Goods Shed

The goods shed at Camden was a unique building on the New South Wales railways. It was a pretty standard shed on a platform but also had a canopy which was almost a duplicate of the main shed.

I used the photo below to calculate the length of the shed and then based it on a plan I had for a 60 foot shed and used the same basic design for the canopy.

The platform is precast timber, back filled with earth.

The siding was used to store spare cars, shown in the photo below, as well as loading and unloading goods wagons. Because the CCA car used on the Camden line had a goods compartment it was probably loaded and unloaded in the shed also.

The above photo, from the book Pansy the Camden Tram by Ian Dunn and Robert Merchant, shows the spare CCA car standing under the canopy while tank locomotive 2021 arrives with another service from Campbelltown.

The photo below shows the completed model standing on the layout. some track ballsting has been done but no scenery is in place. The fettler's hut on the left is a Structorama model.

The model was built using styrene with Campbell's windows and doors and the water tank is an old Sentinel kit I have had for many years.

Camden Valley Station




Ron Preston captured Camden station before the closure of the line. This photo was used in Byways of Steam 21.

  All of the buildings on the Camden Valley model railway were built from photos published in the books Pansy, the Camden Tram and Byways of Steam 21. Both these books provided many photos that allowed me to create the feeling of Camden in model form.
The station building measurements were calculated by working out the width of doors and walls in the photographs and using a plan book I picked up at a Liverpool exhibition some years ago.
I constructed the building from Evergreen clapboard sheet styrene and used Campbell's doors and windows. The roof is sheet corrugated iron.





An unfinished 20 class stands at Camden





Camden Station Yard

The yard at Camden is a very simple layout with a platform road and run round, two goods sidings, a good shed on its on siding and the milk depot siding.
The plan below is wrong in that the run round is facing the wrong way and seems to duplicate a mistake on the original railway diagram. I have not seen any photos the confirm the track layout was as that shown on the diagram but all photos show the run round layout in the opposite way.

A Short History of the Camden Branch

The Camden tramway was built between 1881 and 1882. It started at Campbelltown on the main Southern line and wandered across the farmland to Camden. Although called a tramway it ran on its own right of way and light track was used. There were only two major stations on the line – Narellan and Camden. The other locations – Maryfields (Rudd's Gate), Kenny Hill, Curran's Hill, Graham's Hill, Kirkham Lane and Elderslie – were, at best, halts which passengers needed to notify the train guard if they wanted to alight.
The first service operated on 10 March 1882. Services were sparse with trains leaving Camden at 6.20am, 9.00am and 2.45pm. Trains returned from Campbelltown at 8.00am, 11.25am and 7.15pm.

In 1884, the tramway motors used at Camden were replace by two Manning, Wardle locomotives (Nos. 292 and 293).
The line was transferred from the Tramways Department to the Railways Department in 1889 but continued to operate as a tramway. In 1901, the line was upgraded to railway standards and E class 2-6-4 (later 20 class) locomotives took over the operation of the line and continued as the normal motive power until the 1950s.
Services had increased to seven passenger services and four goods services a day with trains departing Camden at 2.55am (goods), 4.50am (goods), 6.49am (passenger), 9.40am (mixed), 12.20am (mixed), 2.44pm (mixed), 4.06pm (passenger), 5.42pm (passenger) 8.17pm (mixed), 10.14pm (mixed) and 10.45pm (goods).
Trains departed on the return journey from Campbelltown at 2.00am (goods), 3.55am (goods), 5.40am (mixed), 8.19am (mixed), 11.03am (mixed), 1.07pm (mixed), 3.30pm (passenger), 5.08pm (passenger), 6.31pm (passenger) 6.34pm (passenger), 9.36pm (mixed) and 9.50pm (goods).
Between the trips to Camden there were also goods trips interspersed to and from Narellan only.


A typical train at Camden station.
Courtesy of Byways of Steam 21,
published by Eveleigh Press



A typical passenger train consisted of a FO car and a CCA car. There are reports of CPH railmotors running to Camden but I have never seen photographs of this event.

A mixed train might have a CCA car for passengers and milk vans or milk tanks, some coal wagons.

A variety of goods wagons were used on the Camden branch, usually with a HG guards van bringing up the rear.
During the last few years of the branch, the 30 class 4-6-4 tank locomotives took over and saw service until the end on 31 December 1962.
Diesels never made it Camden but they were used as far as Narellan. The 79 class was used once on a trial run with a coal train but returned to Central to spend the rest of their lives shunting passenger trains. The 41 class diesels were used on coal haulage between Narellan and the main Southern line at Campbelltown.
For a more detailed history on the line, refer to Byways of Steam 21 available from Eveleigh Press at www.australianmodelrailways.com
In the next post I will show some of the buildings at Camden and the models I have made.