Tracks through time

AN exhibition showcasing the history of the railway is on at Richmond River Historical Society’s pop-up museum in Lismore until early February.

The Memories of the Lismore to Casino Railway exhibition features such things as black and white photographs, tickets, ledger books, station lanterns, railway ironmongery and cans and used to transport cream to Byron Bay for processing.

Glenys Ritchie, who curated the exhibition, said some items came from the museum’s collection and a local antique shop, while others were on loan from supporters.

“I am a keen social historian and love gathering stories and insights into the people that were connected in some way to the old railway corridor,” she said.

“I previously presented an overview of the people and places of the first section of the railway called the Lismore to the Tweed. That included quite a lot of information about the construction work and the navvies of the line.

“The branch line, particularly between Casino and Lismore, provided not only passenger transport for travellers to Byron Bay and beyond, but more particularly it was the social connection between the older stations and sidings and transport of produce to Byron Bay and Sydney.”

Ms Ritchie said her favourite items in the collection were pennies that Bruce Ware used to put on the track as a boy.

“He and his mates would place them on the railway and then hide beneath the bridge and watch as the train ran across them and left them bent,” she said.

Bob Davey shared a memory of his grandfather Bob Ramsey, who had an arrangement with the train driver to slow down at a certain bend so he could leap from the moving train as he returned home from work at the Brown & Jolly sawmill in Lismore in the late 1930s or early 1940s.

The exhibition will be the last at the Molesworth St pop-up shop before the museum returns to the Old Council Chambers next to Lismore Memorial Baths in March.