Yesterday Liz and I (and a few others, it turns out) had Fun Day Out On A Steam Train, Part I.
This was part of the
150 Years of NSW Railways celebrations, which means that pseudo-Trainspotters like me have lots of things to look at.
For Part I of our celebrations, Liz and I took in a relatively tame Steam Shuttle from Central to Hurstville. Of course, living one station South of Hurstville meant that we had to get a slow slow
Cityrail train in to Central first, then the shuttle back almost to Penshurst (it went a bit further past Hurstville, to the end of the third track) then into Central again.
It was great fun, and the best part was the looks on people's faces as we steamed and tooted past them - both the older members of society who would remember when this was a normal occurrence and also the younger members who would never have seen such a beast outside of Thomas the Tank Engine.
Around Central there was a static display of lots of trains and rail cars and things which we had a wander looking at. Ross that I work with was there also, snapping away like myself and so many other people. From
Skyping them in the evening we found out Jono and Penny were wandering around the place also.
There were also some old busses on display, which we rode around the city a bit past the Powerhouse museum and on to Mortuary station - another relic of a bygone era.
We had a quick look around there before wandering up to Surry Hills to the
Porterhouse for the best Sunday Roast with pints since we had many many of them all around the UK. A long lazy afternoon was spent sipping, reading and trying to convince our stomachs that the huge piles of food we had just thrown at them should be processed.
Interesting observations:
- Liz noted that around 95% of the hard-core trainspotters had facial hair, mostly greying beards. I'm half way there!
- The trip from Central to Hurstville and back was completed in around the time it takes CityRail trains to cover the distance one-way. And it's not just the stations, the trains went quite a lot faster in the clear than timetabled trains do. This was riding on 150+ year old technology!
- A souvineer history book I purchased noted that air conditioning was first introduced in the 1920s in America, and the 1930s here in Oz. The projected timetable for getting all Sydney Suburban trains airconditioned is currently 2010.
There's a few photos of this adventure on my
Flickr photostream, which you can also see to the left of this post. If you're a RSS user, put
this in your reader to see new pictures when I upload them.
Part II is a day-trip to Robertson at the end of November, which we hope to have a few friends along for as well.