A dead body, the Indian Pacific and a glimmer of hope for the future - the story of the Orange East Fork

The Orange East Fork train station can lay claim to being one of the more obscure stops in Australia, located just 1800 metres from Orange Railway Station.

It sits next to the former East Fork depot which was set up in 1937 but mention of the East Fork goes back as far as 1885, when a branch line was built to Molong.

Tragedy struck in 1952 when Orange resident Frederick Harold Brooking was killed by the Coonamble mail train at East Fork.

According to a newspaper report, Mr Brooking's "hat and false teeth were found on the front of the Coonamble train's loco-motive when it reached Wellington."

The body was found next to the tracks the morning after (November 4) with police believing that the Forbes and Bourke trains had run over the body before its discovery.

The East Fork's main claim to fame however was its pivotal role in one of the world's great train voyages.

The Indian Pacific, which traverses 4,352 kilometres between Sydney and Perth, stopped at the East Fork until 2017.

The controversial decision to scrap the stop in favour of one at Mount Victoria near Lithgow was made after just 16 passengers used the platform in 2017.

Ironically it followed an article in the Central Western Daily debating whether the stop should receive some funds for a much-needed glow-up but it was too little too late.

The East Fork returned to life in 2022 however after the Lachlan Valley Railway (LVR) locomotive used the old depot as a starting point for its Australia Day journey to Stuart Town.

The future for this little stop remains unclear but with LVR setting up an operating base we could be seeing more action out East Fork way sometime soon.

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