A tramway network for the Mill is begun
Construction soon began on the Moreton Central Sugar Mill, for it was hoped to have it
completed and operating in time for the 1897 crushing season. The dedicated
transport system would be needed from the start, so a narrow two-foot gauge
railway or 'tramway' was surveyed before the season began to the foot of the
Perwillowen Range, near Burnside, on the western outskirts of Nambour.
The Company then found that, because a number of other sugar mills in Queensland were setting up or expanding their tramway networks at the same time, materials such as rails, fastenings and rolling stock were in short supply. On 29th January 1897 the Mill's engineer, George Phillips, wrote to the Secretary of the Railway Department, saying:
"The Directors of the Moreton Central Sugar Mill Co. Limd. contemplate building some 11 miles of permanent tram-lines in connection with their Mill on a gauge of 2 feet 6 inches, and I am directed to enquire whether the Railway Commissioner can supply sufficient second hand 41.25 lb steel rails and fastenings therefor within say the next 12 months, also price per ton for rails and for fastenings delivered on the Railway Siding at Nambour.
"The Company propose to invite tenders next week for the construction of the first section of their proposed permanent Tramway system, in length 1 mile 42 chains, and I am particularly anxious to know whether the Railway Commissioner can supply the Company with 114 tons of the rails with the usual proportion of fastenings say within two months from now and at what prices delivered at Nambour. The prices to include fish plates (please state pattern), fish bolts and dogspikes. 4 sets of points and crossings for 41.25 lb steel rails will also be required." [Fish plates are short steel sections used to join the ends of rails together, using 'fish bolts' and nuts.]
When the rails duly arrived they were found to be the wrong type (wrought iron, not steel) and on 4th May 1897 Mr Phillips wrote to the Railway Department again:
"Referring to my letter to you dated 17th ultimo, your reply thereto No. 97.1016/1 dated 27th ultimo, and my interview with the Commissioner yesterday morning re rails for the Company's permanent tramways at Nambour, I desire to enquire on behalf of the Company on what terms the Commissioner would consent to substitute new 41.25 lb steel rails with new fish plates and fish bolts for the old 40 lb iron rails, bracket plates and bolts now at Nambour as supplied by the Department to the Company, the Commissioner to take back the old material which however can remain as at present stacked on the Company's land at Nambour pending the convenience of the Department for removal. An early reply will oblige."
In the end they were able to purchase a quantity of used 41.25 lb steel rail from the Railway Department, but when it arrived, 30 tons were found to be bent. A local contractor was paid 15/- per ton to straighten the rails, but points and crossings were difficult to obtain.
Also, in December 1896 applications were called to supply one 10 ton locomotive and 100 cane trucks, but no tenders were received. Advertisements for 25 complete cane trucks were then placed in the Courier and the Telegraph in March 1897. According to published accounts, on opening the tenders the Board of Directors found that an error had been made in the wording of the advertisements. This rendered the tenders useless, and new advertisements were placed. These resulted in an order being given to the Bundaberg Foundry for 20 cane trucks at 10 guineas each, to be delivered by July.
The question arises as to what kind of error could have been so fundamental as to make the tenders worthless. One source tells us that there was some ambiguity in the advertisements concerning a phrase 'the Company will provide', but the first letter quoted above and a map dated 12th April 1897 of the proposed tramline from the Mill east down the Petrie Creek valley to Rosemount (held by the Nambour Historical Museum) may provide us with an alternate answer.
This map is very detailed, giving the route and cross-sections of roadbed and ballasting, but shows the track gauge as 2 feet 6 inches, the same gauge as quoted in the letter. It is possible that this was the preferred gauge of the Mill management, and the advertisements were placed requesting tenders for cane trucks to that gauge. The Board of Directors may then have learned that all other Queensland sugar mill tramways were being built to a gauge of 2 feet, and that the Moreton Mill's proposed cane trucks and much associated equipment would be non-standard and therefore more expensive. They could have then decided to adopt the 2 feet gauge themselves, and this would certainly have made the tenders already received completely worthless. The claimed ambiguity may have been used as an excuse to reject the tenders.
By mid-1897, the first cane harvest was fast approaching, and the tramway network had hardly been started. When the Mill's first crush began on 2nd August, only a few miles of tramway earthworks had been completed, no track was laid and the cane trucks had not arrived. That season, the cane cutters harvested the crop with broad steel knives or machetes, and loaded it as 'stick cane' onto drays and waggons pulled by horses. Contractors were hired to cart the cane, a typical rate of pay being 2/- per ton per mile.
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The firm Societe Anonyme Decauville, located at Petit Bourg, France, was founded in 1875 by Paul Decauville, a French farmer, to transport crops from the fields using light railways. They produced a portable 600 mm narrow-gauge railway system complete with sections of track, regular points, jump points, crossings and rolling stock. Decauville began designing their own locomotives in 1882, although initially manufacture was contracted out to other builders, notably the Belgian firm Hainault at Couillet.
In 1883 the Commonwealth Sugar Refinery had ordered three Decauville steam locomotives for comparative trials against British John Fowler locomotives, and three further orders followed. Four engines initially went to the new mill at Homebush in the Mackay area (with one soon transferred to Goondi mill in the far north) and two were delivered to Fijian mills. The mills found the Decauville equipment robust and reliable, but they insisted on one major modification, that the track gauge be set at 2 feet, which was 10 mm wider than the standard products.
The Decauville Company's Melbourne agency saw a possible opportunity for expanding its business in south-east Queensland, and presented a number of sections of portable track to the Moreton Mill company for evaluation. These consisted of lengths of rail bolted to iron sleepers at each end using nuts and simple steel brackets, with wooden sleepers in between, and came in curved lengths of various radii and straight sections. Pressed-steel sleepers were also used, and special fittings enabled the lengths of track to be bolted together. Individual rails and sleepers could also be supplied. Sections of track could be lifted by two men as a unit to allow them to be relocated, or the rails could be unfastened from the sleepers quite easily.
These portable tracks arrived at an opportune time, and the Company immediately put them to use. Though the Company was very satisfied with the performance of the Decauville track given to them, they never purchased any French locomotives or rolling stock. Numerous farmers, however, purchased lengths of portable track to use in their paddocks, to link them to the Mill’s line. These were used for both cane and log timber haulage.
The tiny Decauville locomotive Frenchy rusting in peace at Qunaba Mill, Queensland circa 1960.
Click here to see what Frenchy looks like today.
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As the first season progressed in 1897, more lines were surveyed and earthworks prepared to bring cane to the Mill, to supplement the road transport. The main routes went westwards to Burnside and Perwillowen, and eastwards along Petrie's Creek to Rosemount, The first rails were set down on the completed formation, permanent track being laid on the Rosemount line, and portable sections on the Burnside line. The first consignment of cane trucks arrived from Bundaberg Foundry, and horse teams were hired and put to work. One contractor, Mr W. Sinclair of Landsborough was paid fourpence per ton per mile to 'tram' cane along the new tracks with his horses.
In that first season, another twenty cane trucks were purchased from Loftus and Company in Brisbane. The Board had been told that these trucks were superior to those from Bundaberg, and cost only half the price, but on arrival it was found that they needed to be modified before they could be used. The cane trucks in use at the time had screw brakes, operated by a crank handle on a vertical shaft. The brakes were necessary to maintain control of the trucks so that they did not run into the horses pulling them. When locomotives replaced the horses, the brakes were dispensed with.
Up on the ranges, the Dulong farmers had not forgotten the Board's promise, and since their own Dulong Central Sugar Mill project had lapsed, they had begun agitating in late 1896 for the tramway to be extended to their district. Through their representatives on the Mill's Board, they maintained the pressure to such an extent that the Board's Managing Director and Chairman, John Currie, said in exasperation that "the Company had the worst end of the stick in cooperating with the Dulong farmers." On the other hand, other Directors saw the tapping of 1700 acres of 'first-class land' at Dulong as a way of ensuring that their milling enterprise was a success, and, as most of them owned land west of Nambour, provision of a tramway would increase the value of their properties.
The problem was lack of money. The Company had expended all available funds in building the Mill and providing infrastructure, and in fact it had accumulated a sizeable debt. In an attempt to raise funds to construct the line to Dulong, the Company made an application to the Queensland Treasurer in June 1897 to have the 12 000 pounds set aside for the abandoned Dulong Central Sugar Mill project to be transferred to the Moreton Mill, because it would then enable more Dulong farmers to grow cane and have it transported to Nambour for crushing. This was a legitimate claim, as the Sugar Works Guarantee Act provided money for cane tramways to serve the sugar mills. As before, the loan would need to be guaranteed, but in view of the Mill's precarious financial situation, this time the Government demanded a Bill of Sale over the Mill site, buildings and machinery to guarantee the loan. 9000 pounds was to be used for building the Dulong tramline, and 3000 pounds used to defray some of the Company's debt.
New tramway materials were ordered and the portable track at Burnside replaced with permanent rails. Construction of the line up to the Highworth Range then began. Due to the steep escarpment, this project was fraught with engineering difficulties which led to expensive curves, embankments and cuttings.
By October 1897, a rough alignment along which a tramway might be constructed had been cleared from the foothills at Burnside to the top of the Highworth Range. The track itself had been extended, reaching by 1899 a point near Highworth, almost three miles from the Mill. This formed a temporary terminus, and was located in a gully below the escarpment, on the farm of the Mill's Cane Inspector Francis M. Murtagh. This later became the site of the famous 'horseshoe curve'.
The cost of the line from this terminus to Dulong was estimated in 1898 to be 5410 pounds, and, as it required extensive surveys and earthworks, it would have to be built in stages. Some farmers in the Kureelpa area purchased their own sections of portable track at three pounds and five shillings per chain (260 pounds per mile) and laid it from their cane paddocks to the edge of the escarpment above Highworth.
They expected that the Mill would arrange for the cane to descend to the tram terminus below. One possibility would have been a 'funicular', with two parallel tracks running straight down the range to Murtagh's. In such a case, loaded cane trucks would run down one track, being restrained by a cable running around a pulley at the top of the slope and down the other track to empty wagons coming up as the loaded wagons went down. This would have worked well, as the loads always went downhill, more than counterbalancing the empties. A braking system on the pulley would be all that would be needed in the way of machinery.
A second possibility was an 'incline', which would be a straight single track up the face of the slope, down which loaded cane trucks could be lowered by a stationary steam engine at the top paying out a rope or cable. Power would be required in braking the descent of the full cane trucks and for drawing the empty ones up.
As it turned out, the farmers had to make the arrangements for themselves, and decided on two aerial cables 450 yards long controlled by winches, known as 'flying foxes'. With these, bundles of cane arriving at the escarpment edge either on road waggons or on cane trucks using portable track needed to be manhandled to the cable attachment, lowered carefully to avoid them racing away, and then unhitched from the cables at the bottom and loaded onto cane trucks on the tramway by hand. This made the procedure time-consuming and labour intensive. The cane trucks were then coupled together in rakes of four or five with two men aboard to apply the brakes, and then sent rolling down the slopes by gravity to Burnside, from where horses drew them to the Mill.
The map above was published in the Queensland Agricultural Journal of 1st January 1903, on page 48. The numbers in circles are heights (in feet) above sea level. It shows the Nambour - Dulong Tramline as it then existed, terminating at F. M. Murtagh's farm below the Highworth escarpment. A dotted continuation shows a proposed extension to John Murtagh's property at Dulong, about halfway along what is now Sherwell Road, which was only partially built.
In 1899, work began on a branch towards Image Flat from a junction at Highworth. This was due to the influence of George L. Bury, who was a founder and Director of the Mill and also Chairman of the Board, who owned land in the area and was organising families of Russian Finns to grow cane there. The first of these immigrants arrived in the district in 1900, and their settlement was promptly named 'Finbury'. They occupied land in the vicinity of today's Gaylard Road, the Gaylard family also having arrived in the area in 1900.
By 1905 the Image Flat line with four long spurs was completed, but the land at Finbury was undulating and rocky, and the immigrants had little success with their crops. In 1907 the Finns' seven-year leases expired and all but one family, the Andersons, took the opportunity to abandon their farms and leave the district. A small number moved to a more suitable area nearby at Deepwater (Bli Bli), and some went to the United States and Canada, where the climate was more to their liking. A few returned to Finland. Some of their descendants still live in the local area. The Gaylards are still at Image Flat over a century later. Though some of the Image Flat Branch track was removed after the Finns left, and the rest was lifted in 1946, the roadbed and earthworks still exist in good condition, as do piles of sleepers and rails.
A cane worker pauses for the camera while loading stick cane onto four-wheeled cane trucks around 1905 at Finbury, Image Flat. The horse-drawn cane trucks of the time had to be fitted with screw brakes, to prevent them from running forward on down grades and injuring the horses. Photograph courtesy Noel Gaylard