Cowra Antique Vehicle Club in Cowra, New South Wales, Australia | Community organisation

Cowra Antique Vehicle Club

Locality: Cowra, New South Wales, Australia

Address: 16 Lynch St 2794 Cowra, NSW, Australia

Website: http://cowrarailwaystation.wordpress.com/cowra-antique-car-club

Likes: 445

Add/Update information

Reviews

Tags

• Community group
• Community organisation

20.01.2022 Wonderful Day, beautiful day. Got a bit hot just after lunch. Great turnout of members cars and thanks to all who attended. It was also a great time just to sit and chat. We have a few members who go above and beyond their obligation to the club. without these members somebody will step up, but it is great not to have to instruct. A special thanks to Ian Reid, Ron & Judy Fazzari, Kathy Denning and Dave Barrand. Took the lions share of the work, thankyou.... There was a steady flow of visitors to buy showbags all day, Not so many taking advantages of the cheap drinks and cheap sausage sizzle, but was well worth doing the event financially and as a club group. Once again may I thank all the members who attended, it was a great display. One members car not photographed and that was the magnificent Morris 1100S of Andrew Michel. No idea why i missed taking a photo. We had a visit from the a celebrity from the motoring world, had a chat with Rick Bates and his brother. For those who do not know who he is, famous rally driver of Toyota Vehicles for over 25 years. He is a very nice bloke and chatted with just about everyone at the station.

14.01.2022 HAVE A READ:It was the first road train seen in Australia and consisted of a huge, double-ended prime mover which towed 10 trucks. The overall length of the ass...embled train was 218 feet (66.5 metres). When empty it weighed more than 40 tons and it could carry 60 tons of freight. The vehicle was a hybrid. It was equipped with two Austro-Daimler six cylinder petrol engines of 125 horsepower each driving a dynamo to generate electricity which powered electric motors attached to each axle of the 10 trucks. The remarkable vehicle was the invention of a German, Major W A Muller who accompanied it to Australia where (cash in advance) he was to demonstrate its capabilities for the importer, Ralph Falkiner, a member of the wealthy Riverina landowning family. When Mr Falkiner learned of the machine he travelled to Germany in 1913 believing it might have potential for Australia because it had been successfully trialled over rough terrain. As it was intended for military use, the Germans were reluctant to let one leave the country. ‘‘Only great wealth and influence ... enabled Mr Falkiner to obtain possession of the train,’’ one newspaper later recalled. Another newspaper account claimed that all up, including 4,700 import duty, the venture cost Mr Falkiner 30,000. That is $60,000 in our decimal currency, which would not buy you much of a truck today, but in 1915 Mr Falkiner could have bought 10 houses like the beautiful seaside home with enchanting rose garden advertised for 3,000 at Brighton Beach in the Melbourne Argus (January 2. 1915). After a demonstration in soft sand at Albert Park the road train headed for Wagga, carrying a capacity load of goods for Edmondsons’ Stores in that city. But Major Muller soon learned that Australia was a more testing environment than the rough terrain of his homeland. Timber culverts, never intended for the vehicle’s massive weight, threatened to collapse as it crossed them. The temperature in mid-summer hit a century plus on the old scale. The cooling system failed frequently. It was claimed that instead of fitting bigger engines for which Mr Falkiner had paid extra, Major Muller had modified the existing ones so they would rev faster. A crankshaft broke. Exhaust valves wore out. The best day’s travel was 51.5 kilometres. Reaching Benalla they were ordered to cross the Broken River one truck at a time, local authorities deeming the concrete bridge, only a few years old, unsafe for the train’s full weight even though it had already safely crossed a number of old wooden ones including the Goulburn River bridge at Seymour. The train had left Melbourne at the end of January 1914. It was early May when they reached Wagga. And there, with war imminent, Major Muller and his assistants abandoned the project and attempted to flee the country. There a team of consultant engineers gave the train a thorough examination and recommended a complete overhaul of the Daimler engines. About half of the electric motors which propelled the 10 trucks had to be sent to Melbourne to be rebuilt. The train was immobilised for weeks. A young engineer, H K Muirson who was employed by the Falkiners, took over and nursed the vehicle to Narrandera where minor repairs were carried out before setting out for Groongal, one of the Falkiner stations. The train then showed its worth, delivering six truck loads of baled lucerne and a truck of fuel. Wool from Groongal was then hauled to Hay. There was a serious drought in 1914 in the Riverina and the train seems to have been used to keep up the fodder supply. The train took a full load of chaff from Hay to Kilfera, another Falkiner property west of Ivanhoe which was credited in a newspaper account with saving thousands of sheep from starvation. Then, as the station hands finished loading 250 bales of wool the drought broke with a fall of four inches (100mm). ‘‘The train literally ploughed its way back over the plains, deep in mud, through which no horse teams with heavy loads could have made progress,’’ said the Hay Riverine Grazier. One of the advantages of having electric motors powering each individual carriage with no drive power at all for the engine car was that it was easy to back the train out of a bog. But once again the under-powered engines proved inadequate. It arrived with only five of its 12 cylinders working. It apparently did no more work. Two newspaper reports say that it was eventually towed by tractor from Hay to Deniliquin where in 1918 it was put on a train to Melbourne. There it went into storage and in a final disaster, was destroyed when the shed burned down.

12.01.2022 A highlight of our visit to Cowra was the dinner on Cowra Station - thanks to the efforts and hospitality of the Cowra Antique Vehicles Club (CAVC.) A wonderful... home cooked roast lamb meal, with all the trimmings, and a fantastic atmosphere. Many thanks to the CAVC for making it all possible and we look forward to visiting again. See more

10.01.2022 On the 7th November Grab & Go Showbags will be at Cowra Railway Station. The CAVC will be putting on a sausage sizzle for visitors. Visitors welcome - come down and buy a showbag ... Have a bite to eat from the CAVC BBQ

09.01.2022 It was a huge pleasure to host this, we all had a great night

05.01.2022 Working Bee - looks great