Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Diggin' history: quarry railway from Fairfield to Prospect, 1940

Well it's back to the maps for me. I knew there was a private railway from Fairfield station to the blue metal quarries at Prospect, I just couldn't put my finger on where I had seen reference to it. And here it is in the 1940 Robinson's Street Directory, showing it starting at Fairfield and running as a tram line beside the roadway for most of the distance to Windemere under the name of "Sydney And Suburbs Blue Metal Company". Of course another private railway - or tramway if you prefer - ran to the northern side of the same area from Toongabbie.

(And yes, I have corrected "1926" to "1940".)




The Toongabbie tramway is here.

1 comment:

Tigzy Gee said...

Thank you for posting these images, it came in quite handy for me tracing out the route. I'm a local of the Fairfield Area and have heard stories of the Widemere Quarry Line, however i always got confused while trying to trace out the route map, it appears looking at your map images that quite alot of streets have changed and dissapeared over the years, for example Cordeaux St either no longer exists or has been cut in half and renamed Blackstone St, Water St has been renamed to Chifley St, George St no longer exists, John St has been renamed Eyre St and is much shorter than it originally was plus many other differences. Ive also viewed on Six Maps website when you view the 1940's Basemaps you can see part of the railway along The Horsley Dr which seems was named Smithfield St back then