12 March, 2013 12:20PM AEST

Australia's oldest railway relic

It's one of the most unprepossessing things on the floor of Newcastle Museum but it's the oldest known railway relic in Australia. Carol Duncan spoke with Julie Baird, Assistant Director of Newcastle Museum, about the piece of 'fish-belly' rail discovered in the city in 2007.

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AACo fish-belly rail

"Most people don't know about early railway and assume the first railway was the convict-pulled one in Tasmania, but AACo had a gravity line that went from their mine up on top of The Hill."

"Two full carriages of coal would go down the hill and the weight of them would pull two empty ones to the top. They went across Hunter Street and to the wharves."

The discovery of the piece of 'fish-belly' rail in 2007 by local historian, David Campbell.

"The curve of the bottom of the rail line gives it it's name of 'fish-belly'."

"He was trying to go down the hill to follow the line from the one little remaining map of that railway line in Newcastle for AACo. As he was going down the hill, just by The Boltons, there were some people doing some demolition work and digging and a chunk of metal caught his eye."

"It was a big, rusty chunk of metal but being a clever guy and a historian he asked if he could take it to conduct some research."

"It wasn't until we put it on display and the cafe lights hit it in a certain way that you could actually see 'AA' for AACo written on it."

"All of a sudden, there was proof that it was the AACo rail line and not what had been suggested was part of a fire grate from a train."

It's thought the only reason that it has survived is because it's actually broken.

"It's quite brittle metal and the end little bit that would have sat in little housings or carriages on the ground broke off, so the workers must have discarded it nearly 200 years ago."

"This shows that AACo were a cutting-edge company and that Australia was at the forefront of using railways like this. It dates around the same time as really significant early rail lines in England, about 1831."

There is only one map that remains showing the path of the rail line and it doesn't appear in any early paintings.

"There's a beautiful paper written by David Campbell, John Brougham and Rod Caldwell for Engineering Heritage Newcastle that you can access for details of the history of AACo and the use of railway in coal mining."

It is on permanent display at Newcastle Museum.