Rappville

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No. 345 Goods at Rappvile (N Munro)

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Rappville, 1/7/1982 (State Archives)

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Rappville, undated

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Loading cattle out of Rappville on to the train on 21st April 1967. Tom McCormack sitting on fence straight on in white shirt, Keith Cox man on right on the ground outside and Sam Claydon leaning over from the fence on the left. (Helen Trustum)

Greg Lee states :

I believe that the Rappville stockyards are gone now; I visited them in the early '80s. They were quite substantial, and as can be seen the posts were made from rail.
Being from a Per Way background I was interested to observe that the rail posts had been cut by "cold set". A cold set was a large cold chisel, which was held with tongs, and hit hard with a sledge hammer. (In Qld rather than tongs they had a wire handle, but same idea.) Cutting rails this way was hard work.
The rail would be marked all round with the set. If it did not break it would be left until first thing in the morning when the steel was cold. Then it would be given an almighty hit with a sledge hammer, and lo and behold it would break where it had been marked with the set.
Try and tell that to young railway engineers today and they wouldn't believe you.
When I saw all those posts at the Rappville stock siding which had been cut by cold set, I shook my head in wonder at what the old blokes did.

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Rappville, 1/7/1982 (State Archives)

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44212 and 44211 stand at Rappville at the head of NL1 Brisbane Limited in the second half of the 1970s awaiting track clearance of a derailment ahead. (Richard Hamann)