The Coffee Pot Train with Keith Conlon in the Outback & Flinders Ranges region of South Australia
Steam Motor Coach Number 1 was built a century ago in 1905. When it began working the line between Quorn and Hawker it changed people’s lives. They could climb onboard in Hawker early in the morning, and by the time they got to Quorn, they could connect with the train that went all the way to Adelaide. Same day - every day you could get to the big smoke. It was a revolution.
Now, one hundred years later it’s simply a transport of delight on the world famous Pichi Richi Railway in the Flinders Ranges.
All aboard the priceless and fully preserved “Coffee Pot”.
It might look like something straight out of a Thomas the Tank Engine storybook but the Coffee Pot was built to order for the Great Northern Division of South Australian Railways.
It came in two parts - the little red engine in front was built in Leeds in England while the exquisite timber passenger coach came from workshops in Birmingham.
“It’s actually a steam-powered rail carriage, a steam-powered rail car,” explained Hayden Hart. “It was the fore-runner of the petrol and diesel rail cars that we got to know in the later years of last century.”
Now it’s a thing of beauty in the Pichi Richi Railway Preservation Society collection.
Hayden Hart is a self-proclaimed steam ‘nut’. He got to know every inch of pipe and piston on the Coffee Pot as supervisor of its restoration. He was a teenager when he joined the volunteers so he knows almost every sleeper, dog and spike on the track between Quorn and Port Augusta.
You can see why it’s a steam buff’s dream. It puffed its way up and down the line between Quorn and Hawker three times a week for nearly thirty years until 1932 before being retired under a tarpaulin at the back of Quorn workshops.
There it languished for another twenty-five years before being discovered again when the sheds were demolished. After a bit of a spruce up on the outside it headed to Alice Springs where it sat as a static display on the railway station.
Thankfully, in the 70s the National Trust agreed to send it back.
“They were good enough to return it to Quorn which is its only home base,” said Hayden. “It’s only ever worked out of Quorn as a home depot.”
Eight years of hard weekend work by a team of dedicated volunteers got the Coffee Pot on the boil again and now, passengers come from near and far.
The beautiful fittings in First Class include oak paneling, carpet and pressed patterned ceilings. The Coffee Pot was also the first train in South Australia to have electric lights - not bad considering lots of houses didn’t have electricity in 1906.
It doesn’t matter whether you travel first class or second - the scenery out the window it truly spectacular.
As we clickety-clack along the tightly winding passage through the Southern Flinders we’re re-enacting scenes played out on the Coffee Pot for half its life.
As well as its regular runs it was available for charter on weekends and often took sports groups or partygoers up and down the line. Could be a picnic sports day at Parachilna, a cricket match in Orroroo or a country dance at Woolshed Flat.
There’s no doubting the Coffee Pot’s a delightful train - but you have to admit it’s a funny name! It harks back to its temperamental days in the 1920s when it often ran out of water mid-journey.
So as an emergency supply they lashed an extra keg on each side of the driver’s cabin so they could top up.
“One of the wags on the railways apparently chalked ‘cocoa’ on one and ‘coffee’ on the other,” said Hayden. “That’s how it got the nickname ‘Coffee Pot’ because I think a lot of the drivers thought that the boiler was so small it was only good for boiling the billy.”
The name stuck and now it’s back where it belongs - plying a line that holds a very special place in our railway heritage…
It was the first leg of the ambitiously named Great Northern Line. In 1876, the Governor opened it with predictions of much trade with China and India. Sound familiar? It took more than a century for The Ghan line to reach Darwin.
But way back in 1917 the Transcontinental from Sydney to Perth came through this historic stretch in Pichi Richi Pass. The future King Edward VII made the trip in 1920.
And the old Ghan to the Red Centre rattled through here until the 1950s.
“For a little quaint branch line in magnificent Flinders Ranges scenery it very, very much got a national component to it.” said Hayden.
It sure has, and we’re very lucky the Pichi Richi volunteers are preserving a piece of railway history running through a patch of ancient landscape which looks pretty much as it did 100 years ago.
The Pichi Richi runs a number of trains on the line between Quorn, Woolshed Flat and Port Augusta on various weekends and school holidays.
Give them a call for more information and to book.
Pichi Richi Railway
Info & Bookings 1800 440 101If you have any further questions please email info@postcards-sa.com.au
