Lithgow Small Arms Factory Museum visit

[Gerard Holyday]

Just back from a visit today of the Lithgow Small Arms Factory Museum ,well worth a visit,the history and the passion of the guides was fantastic.I happened to mention I recently paid $70A for a magazine and he said they still hold many parts at the factory but are unable to sell them,if that were true what a treasure trove.

Gerry

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[xa-coupe]

Well done. I have been meaning to make that pilgrimage for many years.
It's good that the government is keeping the parts from circulation.... After all, the SMLE is the weapon of choice for armed robbers, gang bangers and general miscreants ! Sigh

[Badger]

In case someone hasn't seen this terrific MKL entry ...

Lithgow SAF Museum Tour (click here)

Regards,
Doug

[HOOKED ON HISTORY]

It's good that the government is keeping the parts from circulation.... After all, the SMLE is the weapon of choice for armed robbers, gang bangers and general miscreants ! Sigh

Makes me feel safer and I live on the other side of the planet.

[xa-coupe]

I looked at the pics last night and have just upgraded this to something I need to do sooner rather than later. My biggest fear is having to be dragged out crying and screaming trying to stuff half a dozen rifles under my t shirt

[Gerard Holyday]

A great story told to me by the guide was the custom to keep the first off the line of any new type of firearm,they have them all there,except the first SMLE produced in Australia,the General manager at the time took it with him when he left the company,his family still have it to this day and have resisted all attempts to get it back.

Gerry

[Bruce_in_Oz]

I would tend to doubt the existence of any significant stashes of SMLE parts at Lithgow.

Remember that the factory was given a major overhaul when they changed over to the L1A1 in the late 1950s. Major new buildings were erected to accomodate the machinery. Not only that, but any components specifically made for the Defence Forces would be transferred to the Ordnance warehouses fairly quickly after acceptance.

They booted out most of the L1A1 machinery to set up for manufacture of the machined components of the F-88. Note that a large chunk of this rifle are manufactured by subcontractors in Australia and NZ. Last time I was down at the factory, there was a lot of big, empty spaces.

The drawing archives were more than a bit untidy and, the last I heard, had been shuffled off to the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, probably to never see the light of day again. Furthermore, several of the special coloured "artists renderings" of things like the Vickers and Bren had been "mislaid".

Until about ten years ago, the big building to the left of the main gate (the Bren Building) had housed the early card file system. The oldest of these were the cards, hand-written in Indian Ink, that identified the drawings for the site itself and the architectural and engineering drawings for the factory buldings and machinery. The actual drawings, including thousands done on blue-waxed linen, had been folded and stashed in huge wooden crates and then stored in the towers you can see in pictures of the original factory buildings.

In a coffin-sized Rolodex were thousands of index cards for a lot of the factory's "commercial" output: everything from shearing hand-pieces, to aircraft fittings and parts for firearms from Austrailan and US manufacturers.

There was, at one stage, a huge swag of aperture cards containing micro-film copies of supposedly everything in the archive boxes. The whereabouts of these is uncertain.

[xa-coupe]

Whilst I tend to agree with you Bruce I about 5 years ago ( ~2007 ) I found a brand new headlight switch for my XA ( 1973 model ) .. at a Ford dealer. They were meant to have got rid of in in the mid 90s to the various businesses that decided that they would put the best part if a 500-1000% price increase, but I digress.