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THE RIESLING TRAIL
PENWORTHAM TO SEVENHILL
There is a short length of 1 in 72 up grade, then it is 1 in 60 to the summit, 1 in 60 down on the other side until the Hutt River bridge. Then there is a short section of 1 in 70 up grade to Sevenhill station.
This section commences at Morrison Road.
Immediately adjacent to this crossing, on the eastern side of the line is a small levelled area that marks the location of the Penwortham stopping place. The level area has been paved with locomotive ash, which was a material never in short supply, and well suited to these situations.
About 200 metres further north, the Riesling Trail people have erected a PENWORTHAM sign in the wrong place. Their sign emulates the old railway station boards. There are significant differences when compared to the original RHYNIE board now located near that town's hotel.
A large embankment carries the route past St. Mark's Church and Cemetery. On the west side of this embankment a hawthorn bush marks the point where a closed concrete culvert carries the watercourse. The land-holders adjacent to the trail at this point have kept the fringes of the route fairly clean here, and once over the embankment, it is possible to track back along the western fringe to the watercourse, and observe the concrete culvert.
Marvel a while at the magnificent cuttings in this section. Explosives were used, but the rest of the work was done by men with picks and shovels, and horses with carts.
The trail crosses Pawelski Road, and curves to the west. At the end of that curve is the Ballast Pit, on the eastern side, and this is where the ballast was produced when the railway was built. At the point where the curve ends, it is possible to identify the formation where the siding for the ballast pit joined the main line. Note that the eastern fence line, marking the railway land, is well to the east at this point.
A straight stretch of 1 in 60 leads up to the Summit Cutting, and here, just before the distance marker is the highest point on the line, and notable for being the same elevation as the railway at Mount Lofty.
Just before, Tatkana Road, on the eastern side of the trail, is a collection of large stones that mark the plinth for the TATKANA stopping place.
Shortly after the Tatkana Road crossing, the trail enters a long straight, and it is along this straight that an accommodation crossing is seen. We must remember that the land for the railway was compulsorily acquired, and in many cases left farmers with their holding transected by the line. Looking just east of this point can be seen a ruin, which no doubt was the farmhouse when the line was built, and therefore needed a private crossing. The gates on each side of the trail feature well-weathered sheets of iron, that were once signs - in this case painted ones. Enamel signs were fairly common on these accommodation crossings, but those that hadnÕt found their way into the hands of collectors by 1978, were removed , along with any other South Australian Railways sign, when Australian National took over. We have one of these enamel signs gracing the inside of the cellar-door at The Wilson Vineyard. The short version is that there was a forty shilling penalty for not closing and fastening the gate. At this accommodation crossing we see more locomotive ash used as a fill.
There is much to see at the Mintaro Road crossing. On the eastern side is a stone-bordered plinth for the stopping place. The Riesling Trail people have unthinkingly placed one of their marker posts smack in the middle of this area that was for passengers to join the railcar. This plinth is set back about 15 metres from the crossing, which distance corresponds to the length of the railcar. At ground-level stops, passengers could only join or alight by the rear steps, and therefore the position of the plinth ensured that the north-bound railcar did not foul the level crossing. There was never a station board at this point, but the railcar could be hailed at any level crossing, and we suspect that it would have been a popular stopping place. When the railway was dismantled, the rails were not lifted at crossings with bitumen roads. Anyone with a tape measure should find that the distance between the insides of the rails is 1600 mm, or 5 feet 3 inches. On either side of the trail are the concrete bases of the level crossing lights. The plastic conduit set in them testifies that they were relatively recent. In fact the crossing lights at this site were installed in 1980. Prior to that there was a single wig-wag crossing device on the north-west aspect of the crossing. When the railway was closed, this was one of the sore points with the Clare Council, because the replacement of the old wig-wag signal with the conventional flashing-light crossing protection had been at some considerable cost, for a railway service that survived only another three years.
Another 200 metres to the Hutt River bridge. On the south-eastern abutment is bolted a length of rail. It seems to have been fixed there to stabilise some movement of the abutment, but observe that this is not the same type of rail as the walker has been used to seeing in the construction of fence-posts along the trail. This is "Bull-head" rail and harks from an earlier era of railway construction. We shall meet it again at the Clare Showgrounds, at which point it shall be explained further. It probably also dates the crack in that abutment to the first few years of the line's existence.
From the Hutt River, there is a short stretch of up-grade, before entering the "Christmas-Tree Cutting". Sevenhill locals long cherished this cutting, where feral pines flourished along the trackside in spite of the regular cull each December. Surprisingly there are now far fewer Christmas trees than in the railway days.
On emerging from the Christmas-Tree Cutting, is the Sevenhill station yard.
From here we proceed to the section SEVENHILL TO CLARE.