Mount Lyell Mining & Railway Co. No.10

Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery, Invermay

Mount Lyell Mining & Railway Co. No.10 displayed at the Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery, Invermay, Launceston.

The loco is professionally presented in a suitable diorama including mixed gauge track, which was a feature of the Mt Lyell works at Queenstown.

This photograph was kindly contributed by Stuart Dix.

Builder	Lokomotivfabrik Krauss & Co, Munich, Germany
Builder’s Number & Year	6067 of 1910
Wheel Arrangement	0-4-0WT

This locomotive was built for the Mount Lyell Mining & Railway Company for their tramway serving the copper mines and smelter at Queenstown, becoming No.10 and joining the considerable fleet of similar Krauss locomotives working there. Small German-built locomotives such as this example were popular for mining, industrial and construction duties in Australia until the outbreak of World War 1, after which British manufactured machines were favoured.

The little loco spent its entire working career at Mt Lyell, being retired in 1963. It was saved for preservation in 1966 when purchased by the Queen Victoria Museum and transferred to Launceston by road circa 1970. It was loaded onto a Tasmanian Government Railway ‘KG’ flat wagon and stored outside the Launceston roundhouse for some years until the Tasmanian Steam Preservation Society negotiated a lease of the loco for running on their private line 'The Second River Tramway' at Karoola. No.10 subsequently moved to the Redwater Creek Tramway, Sheffield.

In July 2001 No.10 moved again, returning to Launceston for static display at the Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery, which has been established in the former Tasmanian Government Railways workshops at Invermay. A feature of the Mt Lyell Company operations around Queenstown were mixed gauge track comprising 2’ gauge for the mine and works tramways, and 3’ 6” gauge for the Abt railway to the port at Strahan / Regatta Point. Mt Lyell No.10 is professionally presented at Invermay in a suitable diorama including a section of mixed gauge track representing the operations at Queenstown.

References

a	'Light Railways - Australia's Magazine of Industrial & Narrow-Gauge Railways', Number 153, June 2000. Article ‘Krauss Locomotives in Australia – A close look at their characteristics and an overview of their migrations’ by Bruce Macdonald. Published by Light Railway Research Society of Australia Inc. pp.10-18. (This article is also available online.)
b	Wikipedia page for Lokomotivfabrik Krauss & Co / George Krauss, retrieved 31 August 2021.

Page updated: 14 September 2021

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