The Red Rattler

Recently found this pic in a book about Australian Railways. It was taken about 1964:

It's a veritable Sydney suburban 'Red Rattler' - but there are two even more significant factors.

1. This set shows the first double-decker (trailer) cars in service. Those of us who, like myself, came to Tech every day on the train used to scramble for an upstairs window seat when the double-deckers appeared, and marvel at the view, looking down ladies' blouses. Later, we'd scramble for a downstairs window seat, and marvel at the view, looking up girls' skirts.

2. This photo was taken at a spot where I spent most of the carefree hours of my boyhood. To the left and below, Neverfail Bay, good for messing about in the mud, with decaying row-boats and tar-pungent oyster barges, and on home-made rafts. In the distance, Caravan Head and Como, places to explore by sneaking over the Como Bridge between trains. To the right and above lies Yarran Road, Oatley, where I failed to grow up. The stretch of gully and bush on the right, between the spot where the photographer is standing and the Como Rail Bridge which lies about a hundred yards ahead of the train, was My Place.

My place, for cubby houses under lantata bushes, and caves in the sandstone cliffs, and secret, parent-forbidden fires, and rock fights, and loading and letting off bunger-guns, and building dams in the tiny creek, and fist-fights with other gangs of marauding boys and endless, dreamy days when the world seemed to consist only of summer and uncounted holidays.

Just to the left is where Brendyn Wilson is shown on the '69ers website laying his head on a rail. Rob Hodge's house is to the left and above. The photographer is standing on a shelf of rock where once was written, in tar picked off the road and moulded by two pairs of warm young female hands, the names of two boys they fancied. Neither of the names was mine.

The construction of the new Como Rail Bridge, starting in 1966, meant that much of this vista disappeared. The sandstone cliff where our choicest caves lay was sheared off to create a wider cutting. The old rail bed is now a cycleway where hundreds of suburban bores in Nikes and bumbags pedal backwards and forwards over the old Como Bridge. My Place, the gully below, has gone, choked with rubble from the excavations and the realignment of the lines.

Perhaps it's just as well. I wouldn't want any other boy to have it, and I'm too old to fight.
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Historical comments:

• These Sydney suburban passenger trains are more correctly designated EMU (Electric Multiple Unit) sets
• More information about them is to be found here.
• Trainworks at Thirlmere has some cars in its collection.
• At the time, they were not known colloquially as 'Red Rattlers'; this term applies to Melbourne's suburban railcars. The 'rattler' epithet was introduced in the 1980s by a Sydney politician attacking the NSW government's transport policies; at that time, many of these trains were still in operation, or at any rate, some of the older cars were still to be seen.