A Bloke Needs a Shed... Pt 2
Selecting a Building to Model
Out of these classifications, I have selected an iron-clad, gable roof, broad gauge shed as the subject of this article [Photo 11]. The fact that the outer wall can be readily modelled with its attendant framing visible makes this a very appealing prototype to have a go at. These sheds were built at a number of broad gauge locations, such as Bowmans, Kadina and Renmark, with similar sheds on the narrow gauge at places like Wilmington and Minnipa, plus there were a number of shorter sheds to the same basic design scattered across the state.
Similar sheds pre-dating the 1925 drawing on which this project is based existed, but they may have been smaller. Certainly they had the same look.
I refer you to the two photos of Terowie [Photos 12 and 13]. Terowie was the iconic break-of-gauge station in South Australia’s mid-north, before the facilities were moved to Peterborough when the broad gauge line was extended to that location in 1970. It was here that the loaded narrow gauge open trucks laden with coal that had been hauled from Leigh Creek to Quorn using Commonwealth Railways crews, and then to Peterborough and finally Terowie with SAR crews, were shunted up a slight grade and onto a tippler apparatus. Several trucks were then secured, lifted and rolled over, emptying directly into broad gauge bogie wagons for transport to the coal-fired power generation facilities at the Adelaide suburb of Osborne.
It was here that troops camped overnight on the oval on their journey to and from the Top End during World War 2 and where General Douglas MacArthur allegedly said “I shall return” (he seems to have said it in a number of places). Terowie was not an insignificant town.
When I was there in the mid-1980s, the goods shed was in the process of being demolished – any longer and it would have been too late to record it. From the measurements I took it was the same
