Off the rails: Four historic rail carriages spark legal fight with council

Four weathered 1920s railway carriages, a rail disaster museum that doesn't yet exist, and a patch of driveway roughly the size of a single garage are at the centre of a legal fight in the Upper Hunter.

The Upper Hunter Shire Council wants the carriages removed from a property at Salisbury Street, Blandford.

It has taken NSW Historic Sites and Railway Heritage Company, trustee for the Hunter Valley Railway Trust, to the Land and Environment Court, alleging the placing and storage of the carriages was development that needed consent, and that none was granted.

The company's sole director, Chris Richards, is defending the case.

He has bigger plans for the carriages.

Mr Richards said he wants to turn the property into a railway disaster museum and simulation centre, with guests able to stay overnight in restored carriages to get "the full experience of what it was like to travel at night" before a disaster.

Mr Richards said the plan has local significance.

The Murulla rail disaster of 1926, which killed more than two dozen people near Blandford, passed its centenary last month, and Mr Richards says the carriages are identical to those involved in some of the Hunter's rail accidents.

But first, he says, there's the matter of 18 square metres.

A survey Mr Richards commissioned shows the driveway to the Blandford rural fire brigade shed crosses about that much of the property.

He jokingly said the crossing has been nicknamed the "Strait of Hormuz".

The shed, he claims, was built on an adjoining, undedicated road reserve that dates back to the 1830s.

He said that without the crossing, the shed has no access to the highway.

That, Mr Richards says, creates a problem for the museum.

His proposed car park would sit on the same strip, and the council, which would assess his development application, would be giving up its own driveway if it approved it, he said.

"We're willing and able to put a development application in," he said.

"We just don't feel as though we need to spend upwards of $20,000 on one that would automatically be knocked back because of their conflict."

Mr Richards said the council had issued three stop work orders.

In response to Herald questions, the council said it would assess any development application lodged for the site that met lodgement requirements, including one that did not involve removing the carriages.

It said it could not pre-judge an application.

No DA has been lodged, the council said, so it could not comment on whether a conflict of interest might exist or how an application would be assessed.

But it said it considered the current storage of the carriages "an unlawful use of the site for which development consent cannot be granted".

It said it had received "no verifiable information or evidence" about their heritage significance.

The council said development consent was granted in 1992 for the fire shed and that further information could be provided on application.

It said it had offered to discuss the matter of the driveway with the site's owner but had not received a response.

The council said it had tried to resolve the matter since 2023, when the carriages were placed on the site, and that a court-ordered mediation in October was unsuccessful.

It said the proceedings were commenced under a council resolution.

The case so far has been procedural.

In August, Justice Pepper allowed the council to serve its summons on the property's registered owner, Cheryl Richards by text message, mail and social media after attempts at personal service failed.

The court heard that when a process server went to a Debenham Street address in Blandford in May, he spoke to a man a neighbour identified as Mr Richards, which the process server later confirmed in an affidavit.

Mr Richards told him he did not know the property's owner and could not provide any information about where she was.

In court, Mr Richards later described the owner as his wife, then his ex-wife, and said they had been estranged for about 15 years.

Mr Richards had opposed the application.

An email seen by the Herald shows then-mayor Maurice Collison told Mr Richards in June the matter was "operational" and that he would ask councillors to leave it with staff.

Cr Collison has since been unseated as mayor by Pat Ryan in a 5-4 vote, and Mr Richards said he hoped the new mayor would bring the issue to the elected council.

Meanwhile, the carriages are showing their age. Mr Richards said weather, theft and vandalism had taken a toll and they would "sadly" have to be scrapped if forced off the site.

"We're desperately also trying to save these historic carriages from being cut up," he said.

For now, the carriages are going nowhere, and neither, it seems, is the fight.