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  1. mcropod

    Regional passenger service - cabview - Maryborough to Ballarat (central Victoria).

    I found this cabview ride on the Maryborough to Ballarat line in the state of Victoria in Australia. It looks like one of the official orientation videos as it shows the speed limits and crossings from the yard at Maryborough to the station at Ballarat. BTW - an 'Occo' crossing is a private...
  2. mcropod

    Abandoned Railway Stations in my part of the planet

    I've just seen this article which broadly deals with railway station closures in my state of Victoria in Australia, and more specifically in my central SW part of Victoria. There are a number of abandoned stations along the Ballarat - Geelong line where buildings are all of the same design and...
  3. mcropod

    Future of public integrated transport

    This story from the Washington Post should give us heart about the future of public integrated transport in the USA. Two youngies, at least one of whom intends to find a career in public transport, take a cross-country tip on Greyhound busses...
  4. mcropod

    Cab rides on the Melbourne-Ballarat line (Victoria, Australia)

    Come and ride along with the driver on my line, check out the scenery, the railway infrastructure, and the wildlife (sorry, no kangaroos). I happened across these two full-journey vids, covering the V/Line c120km ride along the line between Wendouree (Ballarat's terminal station) and Melbourne...
  5. mcropod

    SteamRail Victoria (Australia)

    SteamRail Victoria is the volunteer-run railway preservation organisation in the Australian state of Victoria, the smallest mainland state of the country. Every now and then it gets the locos and carriages out of the sheds and puts on a run. Last weekend, there were shuttle-trips organised in...
  6. mcropod

    Road Rail accident even in the middle of the Outback.....

    Translation note for non-Oz readers, a "ute" is the abbreviation of "utility vehicle", a vehicle type created in Oz in the mid-1930s so the farmer could go to church on Sunday then take the pigs to market on Monday. It's what some US-arians like to call a truck or light truck, but it's the size...
  7. mcropod

    It's fair to say he wasn't impressed - Sydney to Melbourne in Oz

    I've been up and down this line a few times and I had loads more fun than this writer. Sydney and Melbourne are Oz's two major cities located about 850kms apart in the same timezone. Sydney has a population of around five million and Melbourne not much less. The air corridor between the two...
  8. mcropod

    Spirit of Queensland - 1700kms in a railbed seat

    I left you in Cairns, a tropical port and tourism city of north Queensland in Oz on the Pacific coast. As my home lies about 3,500kms south in a southwestern Victorian regional city, I had to find a way to get there. I could cover about half that distance on a regular scheduled Queensland Rail...
  9. mcropod

    Gulf Country Queensland (Oz) trains.

    I've got myself to Cairns on the Pacific Coast of Queensland in Australia. Cairns sits high in the tropics, and is the gateway to the northern parts of Australia's Great Barrier Reef. I'm not here for the reef, but Cairns will be my base for exploring three oddball trains in the vicinity. I'm...
  10. mcropod

    NSW Railways restores iconic steam loco 3801

    NSW runs intra-state and some interstate rail services in that large Oz state. Its Heritage Rail arm has brought back into service a 1943-built steam loco after a twelve-year restoration and rebuild. Both these stories from the Oz national broadcaster, the ABC, give more detail as well as show...
  11. mcropod

    Military base on Coast Starlight route?

    I've been trying to find out which is the military (likely air force) base I rode alongside on #14 in California as I made my way north from LAX a wee while ago in the pre-plague era. I've struck out. From my vantage point in the SSC, there were heaps of spurs going into and coming out of the...
  12. mcropod

    Oz's Ghan up and running again!

    The 3000km north-south journey of The Ghan is running again. We had a few internal travel bans within Oz because of Covid, but they are now being lifted, meaning The Ghan is back on the rails! It's one of the great rides of the world, and on the list of many railophiles, I'm sure...
  13. mcropod

    Havre question (re road bridge near station)

    Ages ago I took the Empire Builder from Chicago to Portland via Spokane. I certainly enjoyed the ride and the small towns along the flat country. One part especially intrigued me as we entered Havre station and I wonder if anyone here can help me out. There's a large road bridge which crosses...
  14. mcropod

    Melbourne to Sydney by daylight train - a review

    With most international travel now greatly curtailed, and much domestic travel likewise, I was pleased to see this article in the Oz edition of the online newspaper The Guardian. The writer is well-known for her biting commentry, and I was interested to see how she found the trip. I've taken...
  15. mcropod

    Upcoming train travel in Queensland.

    From late April, I'll have a chance to ride two trains in Far North Queensland's gulf country I've been hoping to get on for a while. Both are highly peculiar, and without equivalents in Oz. The Gulflander is a motor train which has a short run from Normanton to Croydon, and the Savannahlander...
  16. mcropod

    Ripper magazine with railway maps

    Every now and then I buy a few railway and railway modelling magazines and when I did so in my rural Victorian village earlier this week I found amongst those in the rack a little ripper of one. This one however wasn't on modelling, but was called Railroad Maps. It was clearly a USA magazine...
  17. mcropod

    East to West, and North to South by train in Australia

    This time tomorrow, on Tuesday evening, I will be aboard my first overnight train to start a journey which will see me cross Australia from the Pacific Ocean in the east to the Indian Ocean to the west, and then from the Timor Sea in the north to the Spencer Gulf in the south, an arm of the...
  18. mcropod

    Transferring AGR Points

    Gday there Ive checked out a few pages to see if a similar question has been posed and answered, and I struck out. And when I try to find the answer from Amtraks on-line resources, I get diverted to a page which tells me they cant tell me. Maybe because Im asking from Oz and they dont like to...
  19. mcropod

    19,000kms zig-zagging across the USA and Canada, April/May 2018

    First thing, for the non-metric: 19,000kms is about 12,000 miles. PHL to WAS - Wednesday 25 April (ANZAC Day in Oz and NZ). The most complex and involved travel usually starts in a more prosiac fashion. That task was performed by Pennsylvanias SEPTA, which I boarded at Croydons modest...
  20. mcropod

    110 years ago in Victoria (Australia) - The Sunshine Wreck

    https://www.thecourier.com.au/story/5331270/the-day-44-people-were-killed-in-a-ballarat-train-crash/?cs=62#slide=1
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