Overland

Yesterday we travelled from Adelaide to Melbourne on the train they call theOverland, a sister train to the Ghan. It was an 11 hour journey. Just get your head around that!

The distance between two railway lines is known as the gauge. The most common gauge in the world is the original British invention, known as standard gauge. Throughout its history, Australia has been plagued by the decisions made by various states and territories to use different gauge sizes for the railway lines. It was only within the past 50 years that it was possible to take one train from one territory to another. Here we see a picture of what is known as a dual gauge line. It has three rails so that trains using a different gauge size can still run on the same line. In fact, this particular line has five rails showing that in the past, there were several different combinations of gauge. The shiny ones are those that are most used today.

Today we had a free day to explore Melbourne. In general, I don’t too much care for being on tour in big cities, but Melbourne is different.I rather like this city, they’re getting a lot of things right, and it’s clearly quite a pleasant place to live. It’s certainly better than our rain sodden and grey little island in the middle of November.

Today, been a free day, was also tour manager laundry day. this is possibly the most magnificent laundromat I have ever visited. Card payments for everything, and service wash, and spotless interior. They even have an app and a WhatsApp link to tell you when your washing has finished. Rest of the world please learn. It’s a little sad that I’m impressed by these things, but there you go. Such is the life of a tour manager.

Tomorrow we travel on a steam train, a heritage line in Melbourne known as puffing Billy. See you then.