Sometimes I get a pleasant surprise, and it happened a few weeks ago. Val and I took some German friends to lunch at the Nooj Pub and there I saw a book on sale. It was the last copy they had and I snapped it up. I am very glad about that because this book is exceptionally good, and in many ways.

Nick Anchen wrote "Whistles Through the Tall Timber", published by Sierra Publishing, which appears to be his own company. He expressed a wish to preserve our railway history while it could be done, and he's been proved to be the right man to do it.
He is not just a railways tragic, a 'gunsel' (where did they find that word?), not just an enthusiast. He is a railwayman himself, a V-Line driver, a man who must have a feel for the train behind him.
The book covers three main lines, the Warburton, Powelltown and Noojee lines. The one readers of this newspaper would be interested in is the Noojee line. I'm going to quote some of what he has written to show that 'feel' you cannot have unless, to some extent, you've 'been there'.
He writes about bringing the trains up from Noojee, a steep climb and one which required skill and thought by the driver. One of the biggest strengths of the book, and it is a crucial one, is that it relies heavily on the stories of the men who actually worked the line.
Anchen has got their stories down before it was too late, and thus preserved some real, down-to-earth parts of our history.
The "Neerim South to Tooronga River Railway" never quite got to the falls. It stopped at Noojee, on the La Trobe River. When it arrived, though, it had a major impact. Noojee was already a mill town in a minor sort of way but the railway helped it grow dramatically. The line was opened from Neerim South on April 30, 1919 and Anchen includes among the photographs a shot of little V511 at the head of a short train of carriages for the opening. Even a line designed mainly as a goods line was always opened with a special train of passenger carriages full of important people.
I should mention at the outset that you will not find a better collection of high-quality photographs in any other railway book dealing with a Gippsland line.
The trains took their time between Noojee and Warragul, taking three and a half hours to cover the 27 and a half miles of the branch line. The Noojee end was the hard end, and the times were not due to any leisurely approach.
One of the strengths of this book is that Anchen is a railwayman and he has collected stories from other, older men, blokes who actually experienced what they talk about.
One example is the story about 60lb versus 80lb rails. The K Class locomotives were ideal for the Noojee line – usually. There could be an issue, if "you got a K class that had been up in the Mallee for three or four years, when they'd do 30 or 40 miles of straight running on 60lb rail". The problem was that this would wear the wheels unevenly and leave a groove on the inside of the wheel flanges. This meant reduced traction going down into Noojee and climbing back out. The 80lb rails were wider and thus had more area for the drive wheels to grip, and the 60lb rails were replaced in places by 80lb rail. That was news to me. I'd never thought of it.
Ray Johns talks about a train dropping down from Nayook, heading toward Warragul, which lost all traction and could not brake. He explains that they had not known that the Weedex train had been through earlier, spraying the line, and the rails. They went through at least one 15mph curve at 30mph.
Very sadly, one of the men in the book, Teddy Faulk, was to be killed in May 1946, crushed between the buffers of a loco and a truck. This was two days before he was to be married.
Anchen quotes Josiah Glasson, a fireman who worked the line. He talked about the different demands of the different parts of the line. After going past the Noojee pub "the driver would really open the regulator and we'd be into it, as the grade was pretty severe. It was full on for the five miles into Nayook, just plodding along at about 5mph, as the grade was pretty severe… I'd build the fire up bit by bit, gradually building it up. Then I'd just sit on the seat and dream my way along the line… Once you got to Nayook it was game over – you mainly let the train roll home, except for a few short undulations around Rokeby…"
My 1927 Victorian Railways Grades Book (a facsimile) tells the story. The Noojee station was 761 feet above sea level and the next station southward was Nayook, at 1431 feet. That was a climb of 630 feet in a little over seven miles (I might be wrong – Glasson says it was five miles). There were nearly 30 curves, some of them only of an eight-chain radius.
This column tends to stick with imperial measures, but eight chains equals 161 metres, a very tight turn for a train struggling up a steep climb, well loaded and unable to build up much momentum.
After leaving Nayook the line descends through Neerim (1136 feet), Neerim South (669 feet), Crossover (622 feet) and Rokeby (380 feet). There are a few humps passing through Bravington, Buln Buln and Lillico into Warragul, but a good driver is well aware of the weight of the train pushing itself downhill and he keeps as much of that momentum going as he can, to help climb the hills. It is something of an art, I'm told.
Of course, going northward it was a steady those high trestle bridges, too, where the train was a long way above terra firma. Glasson also gives a good picture of how the line operated and why it was so important as a goods line.
"On the up journey the main loading was logs and sawn timber from the Noojee sawmill, but we also loaded potatoes from Nayook, pine logs and spuds at Neerim South and timber from Buln Buln, as well as a few trucks of cattle here and there."
The Shires of Warragul and Buln Buln had a shared quarry a little north of Neerim South, and rail was certainly the best way to move loads of stone and gravel. There was a loading facility there and there must have been a siding. That part of the line was opened in 1917 and must have been a great boon to the Shire Engineers.
I'm coming back to this next week. This is a book that really impresses me.