Lever Room

The lever room at Bombala Railway Station holds a row of manual levers at the control panel that once directed every movement through the station yard. Dust covers the surfaces now. The levers stand upright, closely spaced, their positions unchanged from the last time a hand moved them. The signal box is a pre-cast concrete structure with a skillion roof, positioned north of the main station 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. The lever room in this 2016 photograph records a space that has not functioned 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.