Lever Room

The front face of the Bombala Railway Station building carries a weathered brown door and a single white-framed window set into light beige siding, edged with dark red trim along the roofline. A wooden barrel planter sits on the gravel platform beside the door. The covered walkway stretches away along the platform on red metal brackets, above a surface that has not seen a scheduled service since 1986. The signal box, a pre-cast concrete structure with a skillion roof, stands north of this building. It is part of a precinct that Heritage NSW describes as one of the most intact and well-preserved country railway sites surviving from the late expansion period, around 1920. The main station building itself is a Type 11 pre-cast concrete drop-panel design, one of approximately 140 built across regional NSW between 1919 and 1932, and Heritage NSW considers it one of the best pre-cast concrete structures to survive in the state. Bombala Railway Station opened for passenger services on 21 November 1921, the terminus of a branch line that had taken 37 years to push south from Joppa Junction. The line reached Cooma in 1889, Nimmitabel in 1912, and the final 38-mile section to Bombala was completed in 1921 after construction was suspended during the First World War for lack of funds. The station was operated by NSW Government Railways and served the pastoral communities of the southern Monaro tablelands, moving wool and cattle out and superphosphate and machinery in. Regular steam operations ceased in 1962. Passenger services ended in August 1974. The station closed on 26 March 1986, the last visit made by 3 CPH railmotors. The branch line itself was officially closed in May 1989 after the Numeralla River bridge at Chakola was declared unsafe. This 2016 photograph records a building that has not served a train in three decades. The yard it once controlled, approximately 900 metres in length, remains largely intact around it. The Friends of Bombala Railway have maintained the precinct through volunteer effort, and the site is listed on the NSW State Heritage Register, gazetted 2 April 1999.