00:00Today, travellers traverse the wide, open, windswept plains of the Monaro in relative comfort
00:06in modern motor vehicles. But back in the heyday of the now long-abandoned Kuma to Bombala Branch
00:14Railway line, travel wasn't quite as luxurious, but it was adventurous.
00:22It was especially the case at the handful of sidings between Nimitabel and Bombala
00:27that were primarily designed to transport stock and produce, and only occasionally passengers.
00:43The good thing about these sidings, such as Holt's flat siding, is that there is a little waiting room,
00:50which means if the weather's bad, and you've got a long time to wait for the train,
00:54then you've got somewhere to shelter.
00:58Yeah.
01:28Rain and howling gales weren't the only wild weather you needed to shelter from along this remote stretch of track.
01:39In 1949, snow was so deep that a couple of trains were lost, partially buried during blizzards.
01:48Unable to move heavy equipment through the snow drifts, on at least one occasion, farmers resorted to digging an engine out of the snow with their bare hands and shovels.
