A SELF-CONFESSED railway ‘‘fanatic’’ with 200 carriages and a looming deadline is at the centre of yet another headache for the Huntlee New Town residential development.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Chris Richards’ collection on part of the Huntlee site includes complete Southern Aurora and Newcastle Flyer trains, heritage-listed steam locomotives, General Douglas MacArthur’s Australian rail carriage from World War II and a ‘‘haunted’’ carriage from an unsolved murder.
But the Hunter Valley Railway Trust collection does not rate a mention in a number of key reports linked to the Huntlee development, including a Department of Planning report in September last year to former planning minister Tony Kelly recommending Huntlee’s approval.
And in December a five-year lease on the train land at North Rothbury expires and the legal headaches begin.
‘‘I’ve never seen such a shemozzle,’’ said Mr Richards, who was granted the lease after selling the land to Duncan Hardie as part of a larger 790-hectare parcel for the Huntlee development.
‘‘It’s not as though we’ve got a few bits and pieces we can throw on a trailer over the weekend. We’ve got more than 200 railway carriages, heritage-listed locomotives, hangars built with state grants and kilometres of railway track.’’
The lease required the Huntlee developer to nominate an alternative site for the collection either on or off the Huntlee land, and for the developer to pay for the trains to be moved.
Negotiations between Mr Richards and the current Huntlee developer, LWP Property Group, stalled after a ‘‘potential railway museum site’’ beside the F3 was included on the Huntlee New Town masterplan late last year.
The location was not assessed for suitability under the former NSW Government’s controversial Part 3A planning processes, and would put working steam locomotives near a major road.
‘‘There’s a site on a map but there’s absolutely nothing on whether it can support trains, not to mention that moving a state heritage-listed item is a process that requires assessment by the Heritage Council and approval by the minister, and none of that has been done or even considered,’’ Mr Richards said.
The Department of Planning’s handling of the matter had been appalling, he said.
‘‘I’m just ropeable about the way there was no mention of the heritage value of what is here. For this whole process to have been followed, for all the reports that have been written, and for these issues not to have been considered, says a lot about how the government handled these major projects.’’
An LWP Property Group appeal against a Land and Environment decision to quash the Huntlee rezoning will be heard this year.
