trainman74
Conductor
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.
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.
