Regional passenger service - cabview - Maryborough to Ballarat (central Victoria).

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mcropod

Lead Service Attendant
Joined
Jan 29, 2018
Messages
423
Location
Oz
I found this cabview ride on the Maryborough to Ballarat line in the state of Victoria in Australia.

It looks like one of the official orientation videos as it shows the speed limits and crossings from the yard at Maryborough to the station at Ballarat. BTW - an 'Occo' crossing is a private landowners' level crossing to take stock and vehicles from a paddock on one side of the tracks to the other. It is not barriered or with lights and bells like those on public roads, but requires a whistle just the same.

From the sound of the whistle it looks like it's a Bombardier passenger train which V/Line, Victoria's state-owned railway operator uses for most regional passenger services. There are only a few loco-hauled passenger services left.

Maryborough and Ballarat were the main drivers of the colony of Victoria's wealth by virtue of the extensive goldfields of the region which were at their heights in the 1850s to 1890s. Maryborough was planned to be a major rail centre, and has a huge railway station there still, despite it now having only a few daily services. If you are ever in the vicinity, you should drop in and have a squizz - it's a grand building indeed, and something which stands out in a small city of around 5k people.

Ballarat is my current hometown and also has a grand station from the early 1860s. The line runs through grazing country and bushland mainly, with a small number of settlements along the way and stations at Talbot, Clunes, and Creswick, all of which - like Ballarat - had gold as their founding reason. It's testimony to the great engineering, surveying, and construction skills of the time, that the line follows the same path as when first made.

The line is heavily used for grain transport taking Victoria's harvest to the docks in Melbourne, Geelong, and Portland.

There's not much wildlife to see in the video, sadly no 'roos, but it'll give you an idea of my part of Oz as well as pretty typical railway workings.

 
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