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The burning of Sydney's rolling stock was a crime against woodworkers. The same thing happened to old wooden railway carriages in Sydney. Slabs of well seasoned (Australian) red cedar, the length of a railway carriage, inches thick and even wider gone up in smoke. That sort of wood was rare when the carriages were burnt and practically unobtainable now.

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For people unfamiliar, 'Red Cedar' in Australia refers to a tree from the mahogany family, Toona Ciliata. Quoting an easy reference:

> It is one of Australia's few native deciduous trees. The timber is red in colour, easy to work and very highly valued. It was used extensively for furniture, wood panelling and construction, including shipbuilding, and was referred to as "red gold" by Australian settlers. Heavily and unsustainably exploited in the 19th and early 20th centuries, almost all the large trees have been cut out and the species is essentially commercially extinct. Availability of this timber is now limited.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toona_ciliata

Sounds like an identical story to California redwood trees.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoioideae

There might be some old red rattlers in sidings of rural stations, my dad made a deal to get one and the fittings from its sibling when the owner wanted to use the bogeys and trays for a tourist train. That was a fun few summers of unscrewing everything from one unairconditioned carriage and and reattching it to ther other.

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