‘Billy’ is dirty

By Tania Martin
EMERALD’S village committee has called on Puffing Billy to clean up its act.
They have been urging the railway to clean up piles of disused rail parts dumped in the town’s parks and recreation precinct for more than four years.
Committee secretary Frank McGuire said the group had been faced with a wall of silence.
He said they approached Puffing Billy for the first time in 2006 and an agreement was reached the mess would be cleaned up.
“They agreed it looked awful and should do something about it,” Mr McGuire said.
The committee contacted the railway again in 2007 when nothing was done to fix the problem.
“I wrote to them again in September last year and they still haven’t replied,” Mr McGuire said.
The committee also called for answers in February and March.
The disused rail parts can be seen on land adjacent to Emerald’s new performing arts theatre.
Mr McGuire said it was an accumulation of items Puffing Billy just didn’t want to throw away. But he has questioned why it has to be dumped in the parks and recreational precinct of the town.
“It might have been acceptable when Emerald was a hick town but now it’s a growth corridor and should be cleaned up,” Mr McGuire said.
Resident and committee member John Dudley said the area was a main entrance to the town and looked like a tip.
He said it had been a problem for more than 10 years, but it was only in 2006 that the committee started campaigning for its removal.
“We are fed up with the mess,” Mr Dudley said.
“We have made numerous efforts to negotiate with Puffing Billy to clean up the mess with no success, so we are going public.”
Mr McGuire said the village committee called for action last year with the opening of the town’s new theatre.
“We thought it would be nice to have it cleaned up for the opening but still nothing has changed,” he said.
The committee has also called for the railway to provide screening on its depot in Kilvington Drive.
They believe it’s an unsightly mess and could be screened from the general public with a few plantings.
Mr McGuire said Puffing Billy’s mission statement showed it was concerned with the public consultation but they had faced a wall of silence with no action taken.
Puffing Billy spokeswoman Nadine Hutchins said the railway acknowledged that the depot and area near the new theatre was an ‘eyesore’.
She said they hope to have some kind of shadecloth screening in place around the depot by the end of June. Ms Hutchins said Puffing Billy was also in the process of determining where the best location for the disused railway parts to be moved to was.
“Unfortunately we have a serious shortage of safe storage areas along the railway, and until funding is available, we are limited to where this equipment can be moved to,” she said.
“However, it is in our plan to have this area looking more visually acceptable by the end of November.”