Levers

The levers in this photograph stand on the platform at Bombala Railway Station, left where they were when the last train visited on 26 March 1986. Three CPH railmotors made that final call. After 65 years of operation, the station closed and these fittings remained, exposed to the Monaro weather with no trains left to serve. 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. That journey had passed through Bungendore, Queanbeyan, Michelago, and Cooma before reaching Nimmitabel in 1912. Work on the Bombala extension was approved in 1915 but suspended during the First World War for lack of funds; the line finally opened for goods services in early November 1921, with passenger services following weeks later. The station building is a Type 11 pre-cast concrete structure, one of approximately 140 built to a standard NSW Government Railways design across regional NSW between 1919 and 1932. Heritage NSW describes it as one of the best pre-cast concrete structures to survive in the state. The yard runs approximately 900 metres in length and includes a signal box, goods shed, 60-foot turntable, gantry crane, weighbridge hut, and an 88-metre platform. The yard infrastructure reflects the station's role as a pastoral terminus, built to move wool and cattle out and superphosphate and machinery in. The platform levers in this frame are part of what Heritage NSW has assessed as an essentially intact site, largely unchanged from its 1920s layout. The branch line was officially closed in May 1989 after the Numeralla River bridge at Chakola was declared unsafe. The station was added to the NSW State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999. This photograph was made in 2016, 30 years after the last train.