On the narrow gauge line (3'6"/ 1067mm) from Thevenard, near Ceduna on the western Eyre Peninsula, South Australia, trains run a continuous shuttle back and forward 70 kms between the port and the gypsum deposit at Kevin. The last train on the line 15 kms further to Penong ran in 1997.
The driver of the XPT gets a train order for the section from Orange to Dubbo. I resume my seat in the carriage and alight with my mother at Wellington. Intercut is footage of an XPT climbing through Dripstone, south of Wellington.
April 2004: all aboard the Pichi Richi Railway for a ride from Quorn to Woolshed Flat, South Australia, behind one of the last steam locos imported into Australia from Beyer Peacock, Manchester, W22.
April 2004: at Port Augusta South Australia a transcontinental superfreighter rolls past the shed housing Pichi Richi Railway W22. Following the railway we drive to Quorn where a Commonwealth Railways diesel heads a special back to Port Augusta.
Six NSW country branch lines have closed since 2004. This song video looks at trains on two of these lines, at Lake Cowal on the Burcher line, at Whitton on the line to Willbriggie, and at Trundle on the still operating line to Tottenham.
The Dubbo-bound XPT leaves Bathurst, and after Georges Plains starts to climb the Tumulla Bank as the driver talks about a tragic railway accident and how he has had to live with it for two years.
Restored Australian Commonwealth Railways steam loco hauls the Old Ghan on the narrow gauge Pichi Richi Railway between Port Augusta and Quorn South Australia.
A standard gauge steel train from Whyalla heads towards Port Augusta, a narrow gauge iron ore train swerves past Iron Baron towards the Whyalla steelworks. Whyalla steelworks uses ore from the Middleback Range of South Australia and coal brought by ship from Port Kembla New South Wales.
Blues by Jim Provencher on the journeying mind of English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, author of 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner', 'Kubla Khan', 'Frost at Midnight', 'This Limetree Bower My Prison' etc
In October 2006, PS6 is in the last 450 kms of its nearly 4000 km journey from Perth to Sydney, having headed south from Parkes and Stockinbingal, as it comes down the slope from the Bauloora Range towards the junction with the Main South at Cootamundra West. Then it winds around Morrisons Hill at kilometre 414.781 from Sydney.
