8 September, 2012 3:05PM AEST

Heritage Express steams into Orange

A newly restored steam locomotive from the 1920s paid a visit to the Orange railway station on Saturday, giving local kids - big and little - an opportunity to experience the golden era of rail transport.

  • Print Print page
  • Email Email this
  • Permalink Permalink
  • Share
1920s loco in stationVolunteers high shotLetting off steamVolunteer on boardTrain at station high shotBarry McMahonHeritage rolling stockPressed tin ceilingInside a fancy carriageEmbossed armrestCorridorSteam into an overcast skyFireboxCrowd around steaming engineCrowd at the stationCars at railway crossingOrange platform with trainDiesel engine

A gleaming engine, great clouds of steam, and many, many excited children - but this isn't platform 9 3/4, it's the Orange railway station, where the Heritage Express is ready for departure.

The Heritage Express is the work of the New South Wales Rail Transport Museum. On Saturday the train was running a shuttle service from Orange to Spring Hill, startling some local cattle and giving motorists waiting at level crossings an unexpected sight.

Barry McMahon is a volunteer with the museum. Based in Sydney, he and his colleages travelled west on the train to take their passion for trains to country NSW. For Barry, like many others, that passion started young.

"We used to go to a place called Bundanoon, on the main southern line about an hour and a half's drive out of Sydney, and we'd stay at a guest house down there. My father would look at his watch and say 'come on, let's go down to the station and watch the Riverina Express go through'.

"There'd always be a crack steam locomotive at the head, and coming down the grade there they'd probably be doing over a hundred miles an hour trying to make up time.

It was a spectacular era. The locomotives endeared themselves to people, whereas modern diesels just don't do anything for people."

The money raised through ticket sales goes back to the museum, to restore other machines and preserve Australia's railway history.

Barry says running an historic train on the same lines used by the conventional passenger and freight services is much easier here in Australia than the United Kingdom.

"We in Australia have moved away from trains, whereas in the United Kingdom it's the complete reverse. It's very difficult to run a heritage train on British Rail tracks, because they have so many trains and they're all running at very high speeds - 180km/hr - and the poor old steam just gets in the way.

"But here in Australia, our tracks are pretty empty. We have the midday XPT coming in and I think a couple of freighters coming through, but that's about it."