31/05/2026
Death, Duty and the South Western Line
When people think about Junee’s railway history, they usually picture the grand station, the roundhouse, the refreshment rooms or the endless procession of trains moving between Sydney and Melbourne.
But the first few kilometres west of Junee on the South West Line lies one of the most remarkable stretches of railway social history in regional New South Wales.
From the opening of the South Western Line in 1881 through to the 1970s, the corridor between Junee Junction and Old Junee became the setting for derailments, level crossing tragedies, murders, industrial accidents and the lives of generations of railway families. Across nearly one hundred years, the same few kilometres of railway repeatedly appeared in newspaper headlines, coronial inquiries and railway records.
Today much of the original infrastructure has disappeared beneath silos, roads and modern railway works, but the stories remain.
The story begins with a gatekeeper named Mary Pegg.
The South Western line toward Narrandera and Hay opened on 28 February 1881. The junction transformed Junee from a railway settlement into one of the most important operational centres in southern New South Wales. Trains now moved west toward Narrandera and Hay while the Main South continued north and south between Sydney and Albury.
To protect the roads crossing the new railway, gatekeepers were appointed at various locations west of Junee. Among the first was Mary Pegg, who became gatekeeper at the Narrandera Road Gates — later known as Pegg’s Gates and eventually O’Shannessy’s Gates.
The crossing stood near the site now occupied by the Junee Sub Terminal.
Mary lived there with her husband James, a fettler, and their eight children. The gatekeeper’s cottage would have been small even by railway standards, yet ten people somehow lived within it while trains passed day and night only metres from the front door.
Little is known about the original gatehouse itself, but the lives of the family who occupied it became deeply intertwined with the growth of Junee.
Tragedy arrived early. James Pegg died in April 1882, only a year after the line opened. Mary continued working as gatekeeper while raising the children alone.
The Pegg children would become woven into the social fabric of Junee for decades afterwards.
William Pegg would later become Mayor of Junee between 1913 and 1914. Ernest Pegg attended Junee’s first public school, became a sportsman, store owner and eventually the Daily Advertiser’s first Junee correspondent before rising through the ranks of Grace Brothers in Sydney. Percy Pegg became known locally as one of the district’s finest athletes and later gained national attention after shooting what newspapers described as a “tiger-cat” near Junee in 1901 after it killed his dog and attempted to attack him.
Another daughter, Minnie Foster, became one of the first waitresses employed in Junee’s original refreshment rooms before later training as a nurse. Eliza Arthur became the first railway employee’s daughter to marry in Junee, though tragedy followed her too when her husband died in a mining accident near Grong Grong in 1899.
In April 1889, the line west of Junee claimed its first major railway tragedy.
A mixed goods train operated by Driver George Oates and Fireman Alexander Ferguson struck cattle on the line just passed Pegg’s Gates. The locomotive derailed, overturned and slid down an embankment, killing both crewmen.
The subsequent investigation cast a harsh spotlight upon Mary Pegg and the operation of the crossing itself. Evidence suggested stock had entered the corridor and that danger signals had not been properly displayed to the approaching train. Ernest Pegg was reportedly already in the rail corridor attempting to remove the cattle as the train approached.
Ultimately the majority of blame was directed toward Driver Oates, who had allegedly received verbal and written warnings prior to departing Junee, but the derailment exposed the dangerous realities of nineteenth century railway operation where livestock, darkness and limited communication systems combined to create constant risk.
Even after the derailment, Pegg’s Gates remained a recognised landmark on the western side of town.
In 1890 the crossing again entered newspaper reports when police arrested a notorious Wagga Wagga murderer nearby. The man, known as Smith, had allegedly decapitated his victim before transporting and burying the head near the Methodist Church at Old Junee. Sergeant Dixon and Senior Constable William Anderson eventually apprehended him near Pegg’s Gates.
By the early 1900s the crossing increasingly became known as O’Shannessy’s Gates after gatekeeper Joseph O’Shannessy, suggesting Mary Pegg had retired around the turn of the century.
Another crossing west of town would soon gain notoriety of its own.
Treadwell’s Gates — near present-day Broadway and Gate Street — first appeared in records during the early 1890s. Also referred to at various times as Gas Works Crossing, Junction Lane, Gate Street and Kanaley Square, the crossing was another manually protected railway gate requiring constant attention.
The multiple names attached to the crossing reflected how rapidly the western side of Junee evolved during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Different generations referred to the location by nearby industries, road names, landmarks or the families associated with the crossing itself. While railway records generally settled on “Treadwell’s Gates,” locals continued using alternative names for decades afterwards.
Only weeks after Mrs Jones had been appointed gatekeeper in 1892, tragedy struck.
While closing the gates she noticed her three-year-old son standing between the rails. She turned and ran toward him with her arms extended. Moments later both were struck and killed by the Hay goods train.
The inquest recorded accidental death.
The story remains one of the most heartbreaking railway crossing incidents in NSW’s history.
Mrs Treadwell later resumed duties at the crossing and appears to have served there for decades with relatively little incident. Yet the railway itself was changing rapidly around her.
As motor vehicles became more common and railway authorities increasingly sought to reduce staffing costs, manually operated gates slowly disappeared across the state.
In 1922 the railway commissioners abolished the gatekeeper position at Treadwell’s Gates and installed cattle grids instead. Around the same period O’Shannessy’s Gates also became unattended, with the gates locked after 6pm each evening.
The changes reflected a broader shift in railway philosophy — replacing human protection with standardised infrastructure and expecting road users to assume more responsibility.
The consequences arrived quickly.
On Sunday night, 11 September 1927, one of the district’s worst crossing accidents occurred at Treadwell’s Gates.
Shortly after 10pm, a Chevrolet lorry carrying eight people attempted to cross the railway when it collided with a goods train consisting of 53 empty trucks.
The impact was catastrophic.
The lorry was struck side-on and dragged approximately 300 yards along the line while passengers, clothing and pieces of the vehicle were scattered across the railway corridor.
Mrs Frances Marion McGuire and Mrs Eileen Pearl Anderson were killed instantly. Ernest Pike was critically injured and later died in hospital without regaining consciousness. Two children survived suffering shock and abrasions.
Newspaper reports described a horrifying scene. Mrs McGuire’s body was located nearly one hundred yards from the crossing after being thrown clear of the vehicle. Mrs Anderson was found beside her mother near the line, while Ernest Pike remained trapped further down the track within the wreckage.
Investigators struggled to explain how the collision occurred. The crossing reportedly offered excellent visibility, the countryside was brightly illuminated by moonlight and the train itself could allegedly be seen for a considerable distance. Some reports suggested the side curtains fitted to the lorry may have restricted visibility for the occupants.
Railway officials later calculated the train driver brought the goods train to a stop within approximately fourteen seconds of impact, with locked wheels reportedly scorching the rails as the brakes were applied in emergency.
The Pike family already carried a tragic connection to the railway. Twenty-two years earlier Ernest Pike’s brother Harold had also been killed by a train near Junee station, while another relative, Percival Longhurst, had died in a separate railway accident near Table Top.
The 1927 disaster reignited criticism of the railway commissioners and renewed demands from Junee Council for gatekeepers to be reinstated at O’Shannessy’s Gates.
The debate reflected a railway system struggling to adapt to the growing presence of automobiles on roads originally designed for horses, carts and livestock.
Yet the railway dangers around Junee were not confined to level crossings alone.
Long before modern workplace protections and formal rail safety systems existed, the Junee locomotive depot (located beside the South West line) itself was an extraordinarily dangerous workplace.
In July 1900 railway employee John Garrett was killed while working inside the locomotive sheds at Junee.
Garrett had been drilling a hole in a locomotive while positioned between an engine and tender when another locomotive backed in for water and collided with the engine he was working on. The impact crushed him instantly. Newspaper reports described horrific injuries, stating his left arm was shattered and his chest “almost reduced to a pulp.” His workmate, Tom Jones, had only moments earlier stepped away to collect a tool and narrowly escaped the same fate.
The subsequent inquest later determined Garrett’s death resulted from the brake not being properly applied on the locomotive that struck the tender, while the involved firemen were formally exonerated from blame.
The Garrett tragedy demonstrated just how unforgiving the locomotive depot environment at Junee had become by the turn of the century.
Steam locomotives were constantly arriving, departing, taking water, disposing ash and being prepared for service. Workers moved between tightly packed engines, tenders and servicing roads where visibility was often poor and communication depended heavily upon whistles, shouted warnings and experience.
Even routine maintenance work could become fatal within seconds.
The dangers inside the Junee locomotive precinct would continue for decades.
On 15 December 1925 another railway employee, Alfred Sternes Baldwin, was struck and killed by the incoming south-west mail near the locomotive sheds shortly after finishing duty.
Evidence at the inquest painted a vivid picture of the steam-era depot environment. Locomotives stood around the sheds while another nearby engine was “blowing down” its boiler, creating enormous noise that witnesses believed likely drowned out the sound of the approaching train.
Other evidence suggested locomotives and tenders standing around the shed area obstructed visibility of the south-west line, leaving only a few yards of sighting distance from some crossing points used by employees moving to and from work.
Two witnesses described Baldwin casually walking from the shed area directly onto the line moments before the train struck him. The locomotive was reportedly only around twenty-five feet away when he stepped onto the track.
The driver of the south-west mail later testified that he had sounded the whistle several times approaching Junee while travelling at approximately thirty miles per hour, but the noise from another engine blowing down nearby would likely have drowned out the sounds of the incoming train.
The coroner ultimately returned a finding of accidental death and attached no blame to any individual.
Together, the deaths of Garrett and Baldwin highlighted another side of railway danger at Junee — not dramatic derailments or crossing collisions, but the constant everyday risks faced by railway workers operating within one of the busiest locomotive depots in southern New South Wales.
The final years of O’Shannessy’s Gates arrived during the postwar transformation of country railways.
In 1951 the site was selected for construction of a new bulk wheat terminal as part of the NSW Government’s push toward bulk grain handling. The old crossing and gatehouse — standing in some form since at least 1881 — disappeared with the construction of the modern grain facility.
We know a gatekeeper’s cottage existed at Treadwell’s crossing by at least 1892 because the deaths of Mrs Jones and her son occurred immediately adjacent to the crossing itself. Newspaper reports also record that Mrs Treadwell remained living in the former gatehouse after the gatekeeper role had been abolished and eventually passed away there in 1925.
As roads west of Junee were progressively realigned and Lord Street became the principal western route out of town, it is entirely possible the railways relocated one of the gatehouses away from the immediate crossing site for continued use as railway accommodation.
Relocating timber railway buildings was common practice throughout New South Wales during this era.
Then, in December 1942, tragedy again struck near O’Shannessy’s Gates.
Shortly after 8am on a Friday morning, railway fettlers Robert Charnley and Leslie Edward Unwin were travelling out to work on a railway tricycle when a light engine returning toward Junee from Narrandera collided with them near the slaughter yards of W. Duck.
Three tricycles carrying fettlers were travelling toward the oncoming engine. Charnley and Unwin occupied the leading tricycle when it was struck. The men on the following tricycles managed to jump clear moments before impact.
Charnley, seated with his back toward the locomotive as was customary on the tricycles, was thrown clear and killed instantly. Unwin was dragged beneath the engine and died at the scene.
The newspaper coverage immediately connected the collision with the earlier 1889 derailment involving Driver Oates and Fireman Ferguson, noting both incidents occurred at almost the exact same location west of Junee.
The deadliest incident of all came in May 1974.
Head Ganger Jack Hazel and fettlers Ron Young, Darryl Nuttall and Maurice Rynehart were working near the Junee sub terminal when they were struck and killed by the returning Riverina Express from Griffith.
At the time the service was operated by Tulloch rail motors, considerably quieter than locomotive-hauled passenger trains. Witnesses reportedly watched helplessly as the train approached the workers. A fifth member of the gang survived only by leaping clear at the final moment.
For families across the district the deaths left a lasting impact.
By then, almost everything connected to the original gatekeeper era had disappeared. Pegg’s Gates / O’Shannessy’s Gates no longer existed. Treadwell’s crossing had changed beyond recognition. The gatehouses had vanished from railway diagrams. Even the nature of railway operation itself had transformed entirely.
Today trains still leave Junee heading toward Narrandera and Hay exactly as they did in 1881. Grain trains rumble past the sites of forgotten crossings while motorists travel roads once protected manually by railway families living metres from the line.
Most people passing through would never realise how much history unfolded across those few kilometres of railway.
But beneath the modern infrastructure lies a story of duty, loss, resilience and change — a story carried by generations of railway families whose lives became permanently tied to the South Western line west of Junee.
