A brand new competition launched at Eugowra Show, and bearing a championship ribbon at day’s end was a very special project from local Judd McKenna.
The feature sculpture train was a weldart tribute to the 3026 – the last steam locomotive on the Eugowra line.
It’s been years in the making, a creative project birthed in the wake of the 2022 flood devastation.
The Cobb and Co coach sculpture, another piece with so much historic significance for the community, had been rescued from the creek, and it was in the early months of 2023 that Judd began to envisage another project.
He’d known the story of 3026, and seen the mural that celebrated it, and this quickly became his next creative venture.
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Judd’s journey to sculpt the train started with the purchase of an old book on the trains, which did feature the 3026 in pictures, and led to the Lachlan Valley Railway Museum in Cowra.
The 3026 was part of the famous (C)30 class of locomotives that powered Sydney’s suburban services before electrification, and was later converted to join the (C)30T class that went on to work country branch lines across NSW.
After decades of service and more than 2.3 million kilometres travelled, 3026 was retired in 1971 but thankfully saved by the Lachlan Valley Railway, where it’s still preserved today at Cowra, although it did make a few trips back out to Eugowra while the line remained.
With the photos in front of him, the challenge was how to recreate it as Judd couldn’t actually find another similar project to look at.
“I tried to get it as like as possible, I had to get creative with a few things,” Judd said.
As word spread people reached out to him to invite him to look through bits and pieces they had – particularly on farms - that might be useful for it.
A fuel tank, gauges, a fire door … pieces have been gathered from farm machinery, Southern Cross stationery engines, a Fordson tractor and so much more.
“Ninety per cent of this on this train has been reclaimed, from sheets of metal to the wagon wheels,” Judd said.
“There’s a bit of everything on here, some of it I don’t even know what it was originally.”
Judd, who founded The Fat Parcel with his wife Tracy, is now focused on a creative venture he’s named Fat Artz.
While he certainly does work with new metal, for a project like this it was good to give old materials new life.
“A lot of pieces have their own history, so it’s good to have history within history,” Judd said.
