royalaustraliannavalreserve

Egypt scenes 1916

from Australian National Maritime Museum on The Commons

• jamica1 said:

  That's an interesting looking little train.

• Iain Logie said:

  The Quarantine Station was an isolation hospital sited in the Sinai Desert opposite Suez at the southern end of the Suez Canal. In 1916, to help construct improved defences along the canal, a series of light railway lines were built from the canal out into the Sinai. The most southerly of these lines ran for 7.3 km from El Shatt, on the canal, past the Quarantine Station, to Gebel Mur. This photograph shows a 60 hp 4-wheeled petrol locomotive built by the Avonside Engine Company of Bristol hauling a train on that 2' 6" gauge line. There were no passenger carriages so a carriage has been improvised for the officers and guests from a 4-wheeled wagon. Behind the train is a small steam locomotive and V-shaped tipping wagons on a 2' gauge light railway. These railways were used during construction and the 2' gauge railway at Quarantine Station had been removed by August 1916. This photograph is therefore from the first half of 1916 and probably from the early phase of construction, when Australian troops of the 1 and 2 Australian Divisions garrisoned that part of the Canal. Image J05879 on the Australian War Memorial site shows the Quarantine Station. AWM Image J00923 shows another one of these locos at work hauling goods wagons on another line at the other end of the Canal near Port Said Hope this helps