Australian NSW Railway

This was my first cross-country train trip instead of going port-to-port by my cruise ship. I got off in Sydney, spent the night and got up and took the train to Brisbane (pronounced Briz' ben). I set out on Train 33 at 0708 hours.  It was a 14 hour trip but almost all of it in daylight.

First Class was very comfortable with plenty of space.  I managed to get a seat on the east side of the train so I could watch the ocean views.  The locomotive and train looked like it was built for high speed but, we rarely got over 60 kph, maybe sometimes 100 kph. I'd driven faster than that in New Zealand.

We made quite a few stops at pretty little stations and a couple large ones along the way. We only had to pull into a siding and stop once for an opposing freight. 

We did pass a large number of commuter trains the first couple of hours out of Sydney but, they were on seperate overhead-electrified track.  Most were headed for Sydney rushing by in seconds. However; once we raced a northbound commuter train so that we were paralell and just feet, window to window, with passengers looking across at each other for a couple of miles. One little boy was waving delitedly at us from the other train.

First thing in the morning on the walk from my hotel.

This was the activity at that time of morning.  The tracks all stub in to the right side of this photo.

Smaller middle entrance.

This is actually at this time the tail end of my train.  It has a locomotive on each end and both operate when the train is moving. The engineer (called driver over here) just moves to the other end to come back.

Graffiti is the same everywhere.

There was hard to discribe the scenery all along the route. It was easy to see but, hard to photograph. First because it was all around you and a picture or even a video would not do it justice. Second, everything was going by so fast that by the time you saw something interesting, which was all the tiem, it was gone. Also, the train's windows were tinted blue which was good for viewing with your eyes and it filtered the harshness of the sun but, relected light from inside the train on the photos.

In the hole for a freight.

One tree island.

Once I got into Brisbane that evening I had another cheap motel walking distance from the pier where I my ship came. in. I got up  early in the morning to watch the Insignia pull into the dock on side-thrusters just after the tug boat released her. This was the first time I was on shore watching my ship come in. She had just turned around in the Brisbane River and is facing south and down river .  

I showered, took a nap, ate luch and headed back into Brisbane and toured the Queensland Police HQ (See other entry) I jumped the subway from the shuttle drop of at Central Station, got back to catch the last shuttle back to the ship.  I made it with one minute to spare. I showered again, dressed for dinner and met friends for a reservation at Pollo's, the steakhouse on the ship.

We set out at 7:00 pm while I was seated at a rear facing floor-to-ceiling window over-looking downtown Brisbane.  We passed under a teal lite bridge as the sky darkened. I ate a good medium-rare rib-eye at a table in company with 5 friends. Life is hard.

Morning

Evening.
Bob at our table took this photo.  Passing under this bridge with Brisbane lite up behind it was wonderful.