On 1 January 1915 at Broken Hill, two men, Mullah Abdullah (c.1855-1915), a camel-driver and Islamic priest in the company of Gool Badsha Mahomed (c.1875-1915), camel-driver, soldier and labourer decided upon a suicide mission with the intent of killing as many people as possible until they too died.
The first victims of this spree were killed or wounded in the town itself. Then the two men set themselves up in a position to fire upon a 40 wagon picnic train filled with 1200 passengers that was slowly passing by. This resulted in more casualties. Finally the two men were engaged and shot dead. At the end of the day, 4 people were killed and 7 wounded.
This album consists of a collection of various photographs obtained from newspapers and other sources with the aim of placing these disparate items in one place.
The first rail link to Broken Hill was from South Australia (completed in 1888). As the NSW and South Australian governments had refused to complete the narrow gauge link across the border from South Australia, the privately owned Silverton Tramway Company constructed the 56 km link from Cockburn in South Australia to Broken Hill to enable the transport of ore from the Broken Hill mines to the smelters at Port Pirie in South Australia; and to allow the transportation of materials from South Australia for use at the mines in Broken Hill (National Railway Museum, 2009)
The original station for the Silverton Tramway was located in Sulphide Street in Broken Hill and is now a museum.
On 15 July 1919, a 4’ 8½” (1435 mm) standard gauge rail link constructed by the NSW Public Works Department was opened from Broken Hill to Menindee. The rolling stock and building supplies for the line all had to be transported by sea to South Australia.
As Broken Hill did not have a reliable water supply for the town and mines, the new line was initially used primarily for the haulage of water wagons from the Darling River at Menindee until a water pipeline was established in 1960. During the drought years of 1944-46, 1085 rail journeys were made between Broken Hill and Menindee (Shire of Central Darling Council).
The new train station opened in 1919 and was located at Crystal Street, some distance from the Silverton Tramway's Sulphide Street station. The new station building is noted to be amongst the first use of precast concrete drop panel construction for a station building, which became a standard railway construction method particularly throughout the 1920s. Approximately 140 precast drop-panel concrete station buildings were constructed in regional NSW between 1919 - 1932. There were five standard designs that ranged from the Ac1 which was a simple waiting room, through to larger station buildings such as the Ac5 which featured five rooms in a U-shape form with front verandah. The station building at Broken Hill was the Ac4++ design. The standard designs were later reissued as Pc1- Pc3 in c1925 (Longworth, 2005).
The single line from Ivanhoe to Menindee opened on 7 November 1927, finally completing the Sydney to Broken Hill rail link, with Orange to Broken Hill the longest branch line in the state.
On 29 May 1957 a new station platform and station building were opened at the present station site. Very few stations of this scale were constructed in NSW during this period. The station building underwent a series of alterations in 1969 to coincide with the introduction of the standard gauge rail link which opened from Broken Hill to Port Pirie on 17 January 1970.