This week in 1998: A drizzly winter Sunday in Melbourne at Spencer Street Station featuring an array of locomotives and trains from many operators: National Rail, West Coast Railway, V/Line, CountryLink & Rail Technical Services in a scene of a railway mostly lost to history.

OTD in 2018: my wife & I were taking Amtrak’s Silver Meteor from New York to Miami and sighted an Amtrak GP38-3 in a siding off the NE Corridor near Trenton NJ.

An overcast, wintry late afternoon at Canberra Railway station sees the regular 3-car Xplorer set ready to depart with the 5.08pm departure to Sydney.

Name a TV show you’re positive no-one remembers but you… en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Los...

Some scans from the back catalogue: My first visit to Adelaide in July 1998. Apart from Adelaide Railway Station (the last great Australian terminal station), the decay seen in stations like Port Adelaide were indicative of the decline of rail in that city until the revival began a decade later.

Another discovery in the dusty recesses of my poster collection: a selection of 4 CountryLink posters c.early 2000s advertising rail package holidays in NSW & the value of travelling by train. Getting these to market (on EBay) to make room for other purchases.

OTD 9 years ago: A brief chase of 9365 Grain bound for Merriwagga on the Hillston line led by veteran ALCo branchliners 864/4814/852. With a combined 163 years of service, the three stalwart branch line locos drag their train of empties through Yanco in southern NSW.

9 years ago today: This photo is for me, the essence of being a rail enthusiast. Standing in a paddock under a cloudless sky in winter sunshine waiting to get *that* photo, in this case it’s the Griffith-bound Xplorer crossing a loaded Grain train bound for Port Kembla taken near Grong Grong NSW.

And now, some bonus video of MW7 heading through Cullerin toward Top Bridge.

Got out for a photo run on the NSW Main South line last Friday on cloudy afternoon that turned into some beautiful golden hour light near sunset. Some of the fruits of my labours shown here with captions in Alt text:

A great example of his work here in the cover of a late 1980s Very Fast Train publicity document from my collection.

Quote with a fictional band that is not Spinal Tap

Another Federal Budget teaser drop in today’s Telegraph. $50m from the Feds to (most likely) investigate speeding up the Canberra-Sydney rail service. The current 3 x daily service takes about 4h 10m for the 329km journey. Increasing speed &/or frequency should be a prime target for any upgrades.

Today: it’s a gloriously sunny autumn morning in Canberra and the midday Xplorer service (SP34) to Sydney is boarding passengers at Canberra (Kingston) station.

Got some incidental railfanning in on Easter Sunday. Here, 2-car Xplorer set 2526/2506 race through the closed station at Galong on the NSW Main South with the SP44 service from Griffith. It combines at Goulburn with the SP34 service from Canberra for the run through to Sydney.

Not the best shot due to sun angle, however, today at Canberra railway station sees the 3-car Xplorer set making up the midday departure to Sydney in the platform road; while a rake of empty carriages sits in the back road to make up the 12.15 Picnic Train departure to Bungendore.

And more Comeng action from today’s excursion.

In Melbourne for the long weekend. Enjoying the Comeng farewell tour Metro has organised for me to inadvertently take part in yesterday & today.

After the recent Canberra light rail shutdown in January, tram rails are over Alinga Street & the intersection has been narrowed to a bus only lane with more pedestrian standing & crossing area. Not a bad rebuild.

After the recent Canberra light rail shutdown in January, tram rails are over Alinga Street & the intersection has been narrowed to a bus only lane with more pedestrian standing & crossing area. Not a bad rebuild.

Canberra Light Rail 2A works are in full swing, with Alinga St terminus being excavated along with the big intersection at Northbourne to get ready to lay track down to London Circuit. This week sees the start of a month of light rail bustitution & every CDC bus across NSW is involved.

Resilience of the national rail network tested again after a derailment today at Mambray Creek (SA) cuts off Western Australia & the Northern Territory from Eastern Australia (photo: Channel 7)

(2/2) The initial 5 LAN roomette & 5 NAM twinette cars were first used on the Brisbane Limited train in 1960-1. Orders followed for 11 LAN & 9 NAM cars as joint VR/NSWR stock on the new Southern Aurora & upgraded Spirit of Progress trains post-standardisation in 1962.

Happy New Year. A recent acquisition was this 65-ish year old document on the first new sleeping cars built for the NSWGR since the inter-war period. The initial 10 stainless steel cars were built at Comeng, Granville NSW using methods licenced from the US Budd Company… (1/2)

In Canberra today: Flixbus advertising goes up at the Jolimont Centre on Northbourne Avenue in Civic, site of the city’s main long distance coach terminal. Hopefully the dire passenger amenities at Jolimont get a spruce up as well.

Just sold this on Ebay, so I thought I’d post to show how fares & ticketing in Melbourne has/hasn’t changed in 40 years. Getting a periodical ticket was so easy: get a passport photo, get it made into an ID card to buy the periodical, take the card with you to buy the periodical ticket & pay up $$$.

Took advantage of longer summer evenings & an early knock off from work to go and do some photography on the Main South railway around Gunning in NSW. I was planning to go this weekend, but the ARTC shutdown between Sydney & Melbourne cruelled that plan. Captions in Alt text.

Although HSR is a bust in SpecFic Australia of 2058, Medium Speed Rail seems viable with a ‘slow’ 200km/h service from Cairns to Brisbane. Another excerpt from Andrew Roff’s ‘Here are my Demands’.

Even contemporary speculative fiction set in the 2050s knows High Speed Rail in Australia is a bust, as stated in this excerpt from Andrew Roff’s ‘These are my demands’ (2025).

Another item from the auction: A reproduction VR poster from Harold Freedman’s ‘Men of Service’ series. Freedman was a war artist in WW2 and later the state artist for Victoria. His major works include the ‘cavalcade of transport’ & ‘the legend of fire’ murals in Melbourne.