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Carriages and wagons

When the Maroochy Shire Council purchased the Moreton Central Sugar Mill's tramlines west of Nambour, included in the sale were two passenger carriages and eleven goods and livestock wagons. These were probably the vehicles that had been used by the Mill in its erstwhile role as a general carrier. Though their provenance is unknown, they were probably built locally by Mill carpenters during the slack seasons. Some parts such as bogies and braking equipment would have been purchased. 

This could mean that after 1915 the Mill greatly curtailed or even ceased its operations as a public carrier, probably because roads in the district were improving, and motor vehicles were becoming more reliable and widespread. They did retain a small number of  rail wagons and vans (apart from cane trucks) mostly for line maintenance purposes. When passenger-carrying excursions were run by the Mill, they generally fitted cane trucks with temporary seats and used those.

The following information relies on photographs and previously published material, as none of the vehicles now exists. Close study of the images can verify many of the details, but some questions still arise. For example, the passengers' doorway in the second image seems to indicate that the carriage is the shorter one, yet a ducket is visible. How definite is it that there were two carriages with guard's compartments? Many photographs could be explained by having just one carriage being progressively modified over the years, i.e. duckets  removed, sides taken out to provide goods accommodation when passenger traffic fell, etc. We do know that the carriages were modified during their years in traffic, in fact one account tells us that the longer one was stripped down to a flat wagon in its last years of service. The author is not fully convinced of the veracity of some of these details, but presents them below for the reader to investigate further if desired.

 The first passenger carriage was fully enclosed. It was 25 feet 8 inches long, 6 feet 4 inches wide and 8 feet 3 inches high. It rode on two tiny bogies, each of 2 feet wheelbase and with 13 inch wheels. At one end was a guard's compartment, with a curved ducket (lookout) on each side, at the extreme end of the carriage. As there was no provision for turning either locomotives or carriages around, i.e. no triangle or turntable existed on the route, the guard's end of the carriage always faced Mapleton.

From a seat adjacent to the ducket, the guard could look along the train from a seated position, and windows in the carriage's end allowed him to observe either the locomotive crew (in the up direction, going towards Mapleton) or the rest of the train (in the down direction, going towards Nambour). The compartment had a full-sized door with a glass window on each side, immediately adjoining the ducket. A handbrake stand was provided for the guard, working on the bogie underneath his compartment.

To the rear of this door was a blank panel, and then two window openings, a half-height passengers' door, and then four more windows. All the windows were mere square openings, but were provided with roll-up canvas blinds for protection from the weather. In later years these blinds had rotted and been removed. There were blinds at both passenger doorways, although these are missing in some photographs. All doors were provided with a foot step. The exterior walls were vertical tongue-and groove boards.

Two wooden seats with backs ran along the insides of the carriage, facing inwards. Obviously, gaps were left for the passengers' doors. Seating capacity was 12, or 16 at a pinch. In the early days, a signboard with "MAPLETON" in capital letters was mounted just below the windows on each side to the left of the passengers' door, and a similar board stating "TRAMWAY" on the right of the doors. These did not seem to last very long.