My children’s picture book Tea and Sugar Christmas is set in the 1950’s at a railway siding town between Port Augusta and Kalgoorlie. It is really important that the illustrator, Robert Ingpen, gets the pictures right as there will be hundreds of people who will be quick off the mark to tell him if he’s wrong.
I have done some of my own research about the train, the towns along the track and the people but now we need to find out what the train driver and the crew were wearing back in the 50’s, on one of the last steam driven Tea and Sugar trains.
I have trawled the internet with no luck and have e-mailed the National Railway Museum down at Port Adelaide. Now I am wondering if through this blog there is anyone out there with images, photos etc of the crew on the train back in the 50’s and if so, if they can contact me so we can get this right.