Sunshine Coast Railway Modellers Society receives assistance following cyclone
Shipping containers full of tools were inundated and train tracks left buried under sand, mud and debris. See how the community will save the coast’s Railway Modellers Society.
Sunshine Coast
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The community has rallied around the Sunshine Coast Railway Modellers Society in Nambour with clean up efforts kicking off this week.
The society was hit hard when Petrie Creek, which runs alongside the grounds, flooded in the early hours of Monday morning following the aftermath of TC Alfred.
Shipping containers full of tools and rolling stock were inundated and water damaged while the tracks and grounds were buried under sand, mud and debris.
One of the huge containers was almost carried away by floodwater and floated up and onto the club’s supply of coal for their live steam engines.
Club president Ken Coulter has been supervising efforts to clean up the grounds with an army of volunteers, including a crane crew and the Rural Fire Brigade.
He said it was an urgent task as the locomotives, rolling stock and tracks risked rusting and becoming damaged beyond repair if they were not cleaned and dried off.
Ted O’Brien, Federal Member for Fairfax said the suburb of Nambour was hit hard.
He commended the community’s spirit and positivity in the face of damage to businesses and homes.
“The community needs to know that the three tiers of government are working together as one to ensure that support can be made available.”
He encouraged anyone who needed help or had questions about where to go for help.
At the station, club members and Rural Fire Brigade volunteers were using hoses and pressure washers powered by generators and fire trucks to blast mud and sand off the tracks.
Senior firefighter with Bli Bli and Districts Rural Fire Brigade Max Perren said he was happy to be serving the community.
“We’re out here helping with washing the tracks down so the mud and sand doesn’t corrode them,” Mr Perren said.
“We’ve used 2000 litres of water from that truck already cleaning up the lines,” he said.
To move the container that almost drifted away, a local team from Origin Cranes offered assistance.
One of the crew, Marty Collins, said they were more than happy to help out.
Mr Coulter said the cage structure and roof above the shipping container was all that stopped it from floating away.
“It would have been drifting down the river otherwise,” he said.
As the crane crew expertly manoeuvred the heavy container back into its spot, work on the other two containers by the turntable was proceeding as well.
Tools were being removed from their storage container and dried in the sun while a miniature diesel locomotive sat having it’s engine dried out.
“We’re discovering tools we didn’t know we had, it’s like Christmas” joked the club members painstakingly cleaning model engines and carriages.
Walking down the tiny train tracks towards Petrie Creek, a huge pile of mud and sand could be seen as shovels and a small digger unearthed the lines that had been completely buried by debris.
Sandy Ralph from Kingos Dingos was operating the digger and said he’d been moving sand all morning.
“I’ve volunteered my time here to help out the community and it’s a massive job; when I started this morning the sand was up to the top of this digger,” Mr Ralph said.
“I’ve pulled out about 20 cubic meters of the stuff so far,” he said.
Mr Coulter said the club had lost a lot of members this last year, almost half in fact, simply due to members getting too old.
“We are always looking for new people to join the community,” he said.
Sunshine Coast Local Recovery Group Chair and Deputy Mayor Maria Suarez said 730kg of waste had been removed from Sunshine Coast river and creek networks over the past three days.
“These efforts are part of our ongoing commitment to maintaining the health and cleanliness of our waterways,” Cr Suarez said.
“The team has been focusing on areas close to the river mouth, with the primary focus on removing plastics, bottles, chip packets and other non-natural trash.”
River clean-up efforts will shift to Nambour, including Petrie Creek, on Tuesday.
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Originally published as Sunshine Coast Railway Modellers Society receives assistance following cyclone
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