A Train Driver's Story

The autobiography of a train driver, who grew up living beside a railway line in Tasmania, spent his early days wagging school to go ferreting for rabbits, Father was a fettler on the rail line. Inevitable when born into a railway family to migrate to the rail industry as well. As did his eldest brother and his twin brother. It was just the way it was became a station porter on the railways, then a shunter, before transferring to the driving grades to drive trains. Eventually he became the senior trainer of new drivers. Driving trains on the narrow gauge tracks in Tasmania required a certain skillset, particularly the rugged West Coast with tight curves just smudging around rockfaces and over trestle bridged gullies and ravines. It is beautiful but dangerous. The native manfern laden rainforest gives way to scenic splendours of farmland and on to the seascapes of northern parts of the state. A train driver's heaven.