Type : Siding
Line : North Coast Line
Distance from Sydney : 3389.228km
Opened : 26th February 1974
Closed : 2013
Status : Closed
Name meaning : After the nearby estate of Mr Francis Fisher, in turn after the Aboriginal word meaning "where the wild carrots grow"
Notes : Later called Lansdowne Engineering. 496 metre dead end siding with a 292 metre spur siding. A crossover was provided 112 metres from th end of the dead end siding.
Until 2013 the home of UGL Rail's Taree maintenance workshop, the 54.7 hectare estate comprised a rail manufacturing and maintenance facility off a rail siding, which branched into three separate sidings into workshops on-site.
Napier Grasslands built four large factories on the site, where it manufactured farm equipment for the Australian market, and to export overseas.
BHP steel was brought in via rail. Two sheds connected to the rail siding, to bring components in, and send out completed machines. Another shed was for research and development. The site produced farm equipment like trash seeders, mixers, post hole diggers, tines, large watering equipment, and more.
Eventually the company was acquired by A Goninan & Co., which at the time was building double deck passenger carriages in Newcastle, and would soon develop the DCA bogie for coal wagons.
The facilities at Landsdowne were used to build the bogies, and an additional facility was built to sand blast coal wagons for repainting.
Over the next few decades, the company worked on a range of rollingstock at Landsdowne, including large diesel locomotives, Sydney's red rattlers, and flat top wagons for BHP. Goninan used the site as part of the significant Tangara train manufacturing and maintenance contract.
Goninan was in 1999 sold to United Group. A few years later it was rebranded UGL. In 2013, citing a lack of support for rail manufacturing from state and federal governments, UGL shut up shop at Landsdowne.
The UGL siding
Overview of the siding
Lansdowne Engineering
Kundle Kundle (near Taree)
90s (Brad Peadon)