Townsville City Council confirmed in late April that work was continuing behind the scenes with the Projects & Infrastructure Group and Conrad Gargett Architecture to redevelop the historical site into the Townsville Technology Precinct.

After dedicating almost his entire working career working at the rail yards, Mr Heggarty, 79, said he’d rather see the site’s “termite infested” buildings “razed to the ground” and replaced with parklands.

This was largely due to the bitterness that he and his fellow railworkers felt about the circumstances leading up to the site’s closure.

Mr Heggarty worked as a metal tradesman (fitter) at the workshops for 40 years and a union shop steward union convener for the Amalgamated Metal Workers Union.

It was a different era when Mr Heggarty began his career as a 14-year-old apprentice rail worker in 1957 – back when steam locomotives still ruled the rails.

“The railway workshops in Townsville was the only major railway workshop in Queensland that was built on two separate geographical sides,” he said.

“In the north yards, we overhauled steam locomotives. In the south yard, they overhauled carriages and wagons.

“At that time, there was a migrant camp out of Stuart and a lot of them worked in the railway workshops. I worked with men from all over the world.”

Back then, apprenticeships took five years to complete.

Around 1970, he said steam locomotives were replaced by diesel locomotives.

The beginning of the angst for Townsville’s old rail workers can be traced back to 1989 during the state election campaign.

Mr Heggarty said Opposition Leader Wayne Goss paid a visit to the North Rail Yards, calling on the rail workers to give him their support to defeat long serving Premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen.

The rail workers threw their support behind the Labor leader and he won the election.

In 1992, Mr Goss held a Cabinet meeting in Townsville, after which he announced plans to close the workshop – without consultation with the railway workers, according to Mr Heggarty.

He suspected that there was developer pressure behind the decision after discovering architectural plans posted up on the walls of a vacant storefront in the CBD featuring multi-storey buildings on the rail land.

“That warned us that there was more going on about the workshops than what they were telling us,” he said.

Despite mobilising the workforce to march several times down Flinders St to protest against the decision, plans for the closure went ahead.

The 400 workers who had been overhauling coal and ore wagons were either relocated to the South Rail Yard or made redundant.

Mr Heggarty continued on for another 10 years at the South Rail Yards before retiring in 2007.

The South Yards were closed in 2016, with Aurizon relocating them to Stuart in 2016.

leighton.smith@news.com.au