POWERHOUSE COLLECTION

'Collection of Railway fettlers' tools used by NSW Government Railways

Object No. 87/282

This is a collection of 21 railway fettlers' tools used in New South Wales between about 1860 and 1930. Once a railway line had been built it was the fettler's job to maintain the track. Fettlers were formed into gangs of five men under the supervision of a ganger. Each gang was allocated a section of track to look after, about 20 km in length. They had to do hard physical work like replacing decayed sleepers and worn rails, shovelling clean ballast, tightening bolts on the fishplates and clearing the line of fallen trees. Any damage to the line could have derailed a train. Fettlers' tools included jiggers to make holes in the sleepers, giant tongs to lift up the heavy track, round-mouthed shovels, hammers and crowbars. Moving lengths of rail was heavy work and required team effort. The tongs were used to lift and carry them. Along every length of rail, ten men would line up on either side to lift the load. To keep everyone in time, the boss would yell, 'Lift to the knees', 'Hands high', then 'Throw'. Fettlers and their families generally lived in isolated camps in railway tents next to the line. Their water, basic household supplies and mail were delivered by trains going past. Sometimes they would yell out to passengers in trains going past to throw them out their newspapers. Another group of fettlers were called bridge gangs. They lived at larger railway towns and travelled out along the track to maintain bridges, especially timber ones. Because it was too far to walk these gangs rode out to work on small, hand-powered railway tricycles of various sizes. Tricycles were propelled by "rowing" the hand lever backwards and forwards. 'Triking the length' was the daily task of the ganger who inspected his section of track and allocated men to repair any faults. Later, four-wheel 'quads' or quadricycles and trolleys were used on the tracks. Margaret Simpson, Curator October 2017