The concept of Sydney Waters’ North Shore Sewerage Storage Tunnel project brought with it a number of serious construction type environmental challenges, one of these being how to move 1.7 million tonnes of excavated sandstone spoil from the North Shore’s Middle Harbour district, through the Sydney metropolitan area, and on to Pyrmont Raw MAterials reclamation site at St Mary’s. The solution was to load the sandstone spoil onto barges at the middle Harbour site, haul these by tug boats to White Bay, unload the spoil from the barges by mechanical shovels and transport it by truck a short distance to a stockpile (adjacent to the disused White Bay Power Station). From here, front-end loaders empty the spoil into rail wagons which are then hauled by diesel-electric locomotives to St Mary’s. The rail operations commenced in April 1999, initially using ‘push-pull’ power because of the early inability of ‘front-end’ locomotives to run around their train at St Mary’s. The less expensive ‘front-end’ power commences about June 1999, after a set of points was installed at the St Mary’s site. From the train watcher’s viewpoint, the ‘normal’ consist for sandstone haulage was dual 80 class 2000 HP diesel-electric locomotives coupled to rakes of either NHEF 55 tonne capacity (75 tonnes gross) or NHSH 75 tonne capacity (100 tonne gross) ex-coal haulage wagons, with train weights of typically 2800 tonnes. Up to six round trips were made per day. Due to motive power shortages various other dual/triple combinations of 422, 48, 80 and 81 Class can be seen providing motive power. Also seen in this video along the metropolitan tracks are LVRR’s 47 Class and Freight Corp’s 81 and 82 Class hauling other freight trains, and City Rail’s suburban/ interurban fleets. In 2010 we review what remains of the Rozelle/White Bay and the St Mary’s sites. Approximate run time: 69 minutes.
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