After the strike

 

14,000 striking railway workers throughout Victoria decided at mass meetings on Thursday 8th December 1983 to return to work at midnight. The strike had been called by the rail unions in response to the Victorian government's plans to close regional freight centres. The strike had lasted 4 days, with the rail workers agreeing to return work after the Minister for Transport agreed to undertake a region by region review of the centres threatened by closure and offering affected railway workers with alternative positions.

The first train out of Ballarat after midnight was the empty block grain working to Dunolly hauled by X40 T401-T388. This train had arrived at Ballarat late Sunday evening and ran into the yard where the locomotives were shut down. The crews arrived just after midnight, to performed a cold start on the locomotives. (This involves opening the test cocks on each cylinder and cranking the engine to dispel any moisture in the cylinders to atmosphere before starting the locomotives). The train reversed back into the arrival siding, then pulled forward into no.4 road. Once safety working was complete, the X and T's powered up the grade out of Ballarat and under the Armstrong Street Bridge.

Hearing the train departing Ballarat I scrambled out the house with the camera in hand  and ran down Little Clyde Street to the MacArthur Street gates to capture the train as it passed Ballarat C Box.

Walking back home the train could heard for many minutes tackling the grades out towards Sulky on the Maryborough line.

The strike had delayed the movement of the state's bumper grain harvest of approximately 30,000 tonnes a day. Railway officials hope to clear the backlog of wheat and other freight which had built up during the strike within a couple of days. 

Over the next few days extra services will be operated including extra long interstate express goods, grain extra's, and additional workings of the Fruit Flyer and the Horsham and Mildura block oil trains.