# Australia (June 2009)



## trainman74 (Apr 22, 2011)

I didn't see any Australia trip reports in this forum, so I figured I'd contribute one. Unfortunately, this was almost 2 years ago now, and I didn't take particularly good notes (or particularly good photos), so please bear with me -- if anyone here can add details about Australia trains, please do so.

Taking advantage of low airfares to Australia in June 2009, I booked a flight from L.A. to Sydney via San Francisco on the way, and Melbourne to L.A. via Sydney on the way back. (Same fare as if I'd just done an L.A.-to-Sydney round trip.) I scheduled enough time for the connection at SFO that I planned to take BART downtown during the layover, have dinner, and hopefully tire myself out walking around in advance of the 14-plus-hour flight. However, my LAX-SFO flight was delayed several hours, and, worried about timing, I ended up not leaving the SFO airport during the layover.

I have trouble sleeping in a seated position, and _really_ have trouble doing so in an airline coach seat, so I didn't get much if any sleep on the flight -- even though I had a Coast Starlight-branded eye mask that I'd been given as a sleeper amenity in 2002.

Through the magic of time zones, it was late Thursday evening when I left San Francisco, but early Saturday morning when I arrived in Sydney. Lines were long at immigration, but I eventually got through; the customs officer quizzed me for a couple minutes ("now, you're really, really sure you don't have any food?"), but eventually let me past.

The Sydney airport is served by CityRail, Sydney's rapid transit system, which is somewhat of an odd hybrid of a subway system and a commuter rail system. Imagine Chicago's Metra Electric train cars finishing their run in from the suburbs by going past Randolph Street Station and into a subway version of the Loop, and that's the general structure of CityRail -- multi-level multiple-unit cars running under catenary, with some of the suburban lines running through the main train station and into a loop around downtown Sydney. Here's a CityRail train in one of the subway stations...







And here's another CityRail train on the suburban platforms at Sydney Central Station...






The fare system is similar to BART or the Washington Metro, with fares set by distance and magnetic farecards used at entry and exit. However, unlike those systems, tickets are sold for specific stations, either one-way ("single") or round-trip ("return"). _(I see on Wikipedia that this changed in 2010, and there's now a simpler zone-based system in effect.)_ I'd gotten some Australian currency from the bank before I left, which was good because the farecard machines only took cash. (It seemed like the fares were set so that I ended up with more 20-cent coins in change than anything else -- physically, the largest Australian coin.)

The CityRail station nearest my hotel was Museum, which appeared to have been restored somewhat to an earlier appearance, complete with old advertising, similar to Quincy and Wells in Chicago.






The station at the waterfront, Circular Quay, is actually elevated...






The station monitors giving train departure information are very clear and easy to read (note that the list of stops is scrolling here)...






I'd been told the Blue Mountains west of Sydney were particularly scenic. On my second day in Sydney, I took the CityRail Blue Mountains line to the town of Katoomba, near the end of the line. Due to some weekend track work, a portion of the route to the west of Sydney Central Station was out of service, so I was, yes, bustituted for part of the trip. Suburban Sydney from a bus could have almost passed for a suburb in the U.S., aside from the vehicles driving on the other side of the road; even Australian road signs are more like American signs than European signs.

At a traffic light, I took a photo of a gas station (sorry, _petrol_ station) so I could go back later and figure out the price in U.S. dollars...






That's AU$1.269 per liter for unleaded, which with the then-current exchange rate, worked out to about $3.80 U.S. (over a dollar more than I was paying in the States at the time). "Autogas," in case you're wondering, refers to LPG -- engines that can run on it are an option on vehicles in Australia, and apparently somewhat popular, given the much cheaper price.

Eventually, the bus arrived at a station further down the line where I transferred to a waiting train. The ride into the mountains was scenic, as advertised. Some of the exurban CityRail lines use diesel power, but this one was electrified all the way. The outlying stations had low-level platforms, but the CityRail M.U. cars can handle either one -- the flat floor at the doors "magically" becomes stairs.

Katoomba had a nice little station, complete with what I believe to be an employee break room that was a nicely landscaped.






Note the curved platform, something that was common enough to be noticeable on the CityRail system. They do have platform guards at many of the stations, to perform some of the functions that the conductor would in the U.S., including giving the "all aboard" signal by blowing a whistle.

I later found out that the Blue Mountains line is part of the route of the Indian Pacific transcontinental railway, so I guess I can say I went _part_ of the way to Perth.


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## trainman74 (Apr 22, 2011)

Sydney also has an elevated monorail loop and a light rail line, privately owned and unrelated to CityRail. Unfortunately, I didn't get any photos of either. While I was riding the monorail, I saw an ad for the current exhibit at the Museum of Sydney, and decided I had to go -- it was an exhibit on the history of trams in Sydney.

The exhibit was very interesting -- Sydney turned out to be Los Angeles in that there had once been an extensive tram network, but it was all gone by 1961. Photography wasn't allowed inside the exhibit, but there was a cable tram trailer on display outside:






Many of the items in the exhibit were provided by the Sydney Tramway Museum, which I found out was right next to a CityRail station called Loftus. The next day, I took a CityRail train there, and sadly discovered...






The museum was only open Wednesdays and Sundays, and it happened to be Tuesday. I did see one tram that was being stored outside, and which could have used a bit of restoration:






There are several different intercity rail operators in Australia. CountryLink, which is primarily in the state of New South Wales, runs two trains a day between Sydney and Melbourne, which is an 11-hour trip -- one a day train and one overnight.

Because buying tickets from the U.S. seemed to require a travel agency, I'd gone to the CountryLink ticket office at Sydney Central Station fairly soon after I arrived in Sydney and bought a sleeping car ticket.

The woman at the ticket office made sure I understood that I might end up sharing the room with someone -- my ticket was for a lower berth, not the whole room -- but said bookings were looking light (given that it was a weeknight train in the winter).

I showed back up at Sydney Central Station after the evening rush hour, checked my suitcase at the CountryLink baggage office, and spent some time wandering around the station...






I found a plaque commemorating the opening of the standard-gauge transcontinental railway through Australia in 1970. (The transcontinental line was completed in 1917, but there were several gauge changes over the whole route.)






Right outside the station was a hostel in a couple of old train cars. (I didn't stay here, but I kind of wish I had -- I'd used Priceline bidding and got a very good price at a Marriott.)






This was the train, diesel-hauled with single-level equipment of a type called XPT. The service didn't have a name; it was only identified as "XPT service to Melbourne" -- imagine Amtrak dropping the Lake Shore Limited name and instead referring to that train solely as "Viewliner-Amfleet II service to Chicago."






My room was a "twinette," as they're called in Australia; taking up most of the width of the car but noticeably smaller than an Amtrak bedroom. There's a sink/toilet/shower combo between each pair of rooms, with an "occupied" light visible from each side.

The numbers for each of the three seats -- only two visible here -- come into play on day trains. (That's my jacket hanging up at the left edge of the photo, not part of the train equipment.)






It turned out that I'd indeed be alone in the room. Waiting for me on the seat was an amenity kit, towel, and a small snack pack. No full-service dining car on the train, but there was a cafe car; however, I didn't visit it -- I'd eaten dinner at Sydney Central Station and was engrossed in a book (_True History of the Kelly Gang,_ which was a recommendation I'd gotten in looking for books about Australia).

The train pulled out on time. I finished the book after a couple of hours and then had the car attendant turn down the bed. He also took my order for a hot beverage to be served with breakfast; I don't drink coffee and am not a big fan of tea, so I chose hot chocolate.

The sheets, blanket, and pillow were nicer than those used by Amtrak, but I found the mattress to be a little too hard and uncomfortable. The ride quality was pretty good, but I had trouble sleeping.


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## trainman74 (Apr 22, 2011)

About an hour before arrival in Melbourne, the car attendant knocked on the door with the light breakfast. In addition to the hot chocolate, among the contents were pineapple juice, milk, and cereal (Kellogg's Sultana Bran, which you're probably familiar with by a slightly different name).

After eating breakfast, I took a shower -- the water pressure and temperature were fine, and there was a compartment that actually kept my clothes dry.

The train arrived at Melbourne's Southern Cross Station on time, going head-in. Since my sleeper was at the head of the train and the baggage was at the rear, I had to walk "against traffic" to get my bag off the cart it had been unloaded onto.

Southern Cross Station has an interesting roof...






Melbourne's tourism bureau offers a free guided walking tour daily that I had pre-reserved online. There were only three of us in the group, plus the guide; the tour lasted about three and a half hours and was a great overview of the city. It included a tram ride -- unlike Sydney, Melbourne still has plenty of them. Since I was American (other two people taking the tour were Dutch and Brazilian), the guide kind of assumed I wasn't familiar with public transportation, but I politely corrected him -- in fact, I've ridden the Melbourne tram on the F line in San Francisco.

This is a "heritage" tram that runs on a tourist-oriented loop route:






This is the more typical equipment...











Also seen in Melbourne, a station with analog clocks on the facade showing the next departures...






Unfortunately, I only had one day in Melbourne before I had to fly home. Melbourne doesn't have rail transit to its airport, but there is express bus service from Southern Cross Station, the fare for which includes shuttle van transportation from hotels to the station to catch the bus.

Again, I didn't get much if any sleep -- this time, it didn't help that the flight left Australia in the mid-morning and, again through the magic of time zones, arrived in L.A. only a couple of hours after I'd left Melbourne. I breezed through immigration and customs and went home to sleep.

Incidentally, it's not train-related (except that I took this picture inside Sydney Central Station), but this is the biggest difference between the U.S. and Australia: in Australia, Burger King is called Hungry Jack's.


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## jb64 (Apr 22, 2011)

very interesting report. Thanks for sharing.


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## OlympianHiawatha (Apr 22, 2011)

GREAT REPORT! I spent 2 weeks in Sydney back in 1990 and at that time the commuter rail was simply called The Sydney System. I still have a T-Shirt I bought with the System Map on it! But it mostly had double decker cars very similar to today's Bombardier Lozenge Coaches and we were able to purchase weekly Unlimited Ride passes, which we got much more than our money's worth from.

On a trip to one of the outlying horse tracks, we ended up on some vintage interurban type cars with bare bulb light fixtures and doors that would not close but the ride was very enjoyable, especially after leaving the track with a few more dollars and beers than arriving


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## Shanghai (Apr 23, 2011)

I took the commuter train from Sydney to Woorunga to visit friends.

Nice when we went over the Sydney Harbor Bridge.


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## printman2000 (Apr 24, 2011)

Thanks for the post. Very interesting.

I have seen pics of Australian long distance trains before and always wondered who made the cars. They look, from the exterior, very American, but I doubt they are. Anyone know who makes them? How old they are?


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## trainman74 (Apr 25, 2011)

printman2000 said:


> I have seen pics of Australian long distance trains before and always wondered who made the cars. They look, from the exterior, very American, but I doubt they are. Anyone know who makes them? How old they are?


A little research shows that the XPT cars used on the Sydney-Melbourne trains date to 1982, and were made by an Australian company called Commonwealth Engineering; they were apparently inspired by both the British InterCity 125 trains and by Budd designs from the U.S.


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## Ripper3785 (Apr 27, 2011)

Nice report, and nice to see a familiar flyertalker over here. One I've met even. Should have done a train trip like this when we were there the same month, but we turned around in melbourne and flew straight back.


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## trainman74 (Apr 27, 2011)

Ripper3785 said:


> Should have done a train trip like this when we were there the same month, but we turned around in melbourne and flew straight back.


Aside from the somewhat uncomfortable bed, the other problem with the train ride was that, June being the dead of winter, the entire trip was in darkness (it was just barely dawn upon arrival in Melbourne).


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