Vic Rail Trucks

While looking for the Vic Rail workshop truck I came across a fantastic series of historic Victorian Railways posed truck photos going back to the 20's. I will gradually post them. Some are certainly ring-ins but all under the Vic Rail search.

Here is an interesting Vic Rail jigger taken in 1941. An Opel Blitz fork lift. It is on the SA Library site but says Vic?


And this is a very nice Diamond T tank transporter pressed into service post war.

Very interesting photos, Lang.
The first four or so pictures show the general opinion that the Americans introduced us to forklifts during World War 2, is wrong by ten or more years. The car looks very much like a 1930's Vauxhall, possibly a DX 25?hp model.
At first glance, I thought your last photo was a 1920's Morris Commercial but on a closer look, the first word is too long and the second is too short. Maybe it is Straker Squire? My eyesight is no longer good enough to read it. I see that they must be planning to get every last mile from that bald front tyre as the spare looks good.

I'm not doing well going for the locations: most had been altered by my era as facilities were redeveloped, and many were off limits.
Most will be various depots and workshops. Surprisingly, none seems to show Newport Workshops, but Spotswood will be there, and many are at Jolimont Workshops and some at Batman Ave. Arden St may be there.
The Diamond T was a surprise. VR did almost everything in house, and that would include earthworks for new projects: lots of track duplication, and the direct Moe - Yallourn line. Flood and fire damage repair were also important. Generally, track and bridge works were done using rail-mounted equipment. Even so, VR may have owned the equipment, but not the transport truck. That badge is not a VR logo.
Most smaller trucks were for internal tasks: supporting work sites, and transporting parts and materials to depots.
The cane baskets in the view with a carriage would have been for homing pigeons. That was an important traffic for years, and one which I remember from my weekends with my grandfather (Nar Nar Goon stationmaster). Breeders would send a crate of pigeons in the van of a passenger train. The stationmaster would release them, then send the empty crate back on the next train. I don't know how many stations were used. My memory is perhaps four crates at a time. I am not sure if the sender nominated a release time, or if the stationmaster did it at his own convenience, and sent a note back with the crate.
In UK, breeding homing pigeons was very much a workingman's hobby: they needed less space and money than breeding greyhounds.
Young man to old: 'What do you do for a hobby?'.
Old: 'I race pigeons'.
Young: 'Do you ever beat them?'.

Man to marriage counsellor: 'My wife is keeping goats in our bedroom'.
Counsellor: 'Why don't you just leave the windows open?'.
Man: 'What, and let all my pigeons out'.

On a recent trip to Java, while waiting an hour for a cane train to be ready, we were beside a field with perhaps 30 pigeon breeders releasing birds. Classic Indonesia: several vendor tricycles were there too, knowing that they would achieve good sales.

I'm flat out on a mega tidying of old files (which is why you are seeing two posts per day: I am rationing to that, with more in a queue). They accumulated during yahell and facebook troubles. I will also have to restore the photos now vanished from my earlier posts, lost when Telstra closed my main account, and the associated website with it.
Roderick

The fork lift is an Opel Blitz. Photo taken 1941. I suppose GMH supplied the unit from its sister company in Germany.

Lang