Train Day #2: Puffing Billy

Sometimes you just have to be a tourist and do touristy things, especially if you're BD, bursting with new-found health and energy and enjoying the company of her chauffeurs parents and our willingness to take her places that were tedious to get to when confined to public transport.  

We embraced our inner tourists, consulted our calendars, packed a picnic, and sallied forth to Belgrave to ride the Puffing Billy Railway.  We lined up along with hordes of international tourists chattering in all sorts of languages and fully exercising their selfie-taking abilities.

We're in the right place.

 

Time to settle in.

 

Roger, having gone on Puffing Billy back when the world was young and he was 4 years old, demonstrated how to have the unique Puffing Billy experience aka sitting on the edge and dangling your legs into the abyss.  Which was all well and good but I must admit it was a tad more difficult to get onto the sitting rail that it would have been at the age of 4.

 

Carriage Conductor Pete came on board and checked to make sure that all relevant children were of sufficient size not to be lost over the side during the trip.  Which, as the trip unfolded, was obviously not true of various mobile phones, shoes, hats, and other bits and pieces that were scattered along the railway line.  He took pains to inform us that Puffing Billy was the only railway in Australia where we could dangle our legs outside the train to our hearts' content in the safe knowledge that we were entirely legally allowed to do so.

Conductor Pete lays down the law.

We sat and dangled our legs.  It was a lot less comfortable than it looked.  Some of us stuck our toes out as far as we could and tried to make contact with passing greenery.  I won't tell you who that was, but they must have thought that they were 4 years old again.

We crossed over a trestle bridge,

clattered through grassland and forest,

and wound our way up the Dandenong Ranges through groves of tree ferns.

Conductor Pete was there the whole way, telling us all about the history of the line; the landslip that nearly finished it for good; the shallow root systems on the mountain ash around us;

and the formation of the Puffing Billy Preservation Society which saved the railway by taking the bold step of guaranteeing that they would make up any shortfall in revenue incurred by keeping the line open.

We had an hour and a half stop at Lakeside, where BD took herself off into the warm Cafe and dined on hot chips, and we sat out in the cold and ate our soggy sandwiches before giving in and joining her to defrost. 

That building wasn't there fifty+ ahem years ago!

Thawed out, we waited with the rest of the passengers while the engine huffed and puffed and produced impressive amounts of steam.  BD nudged me ever closer to the barriers: "Get a move on Mum.  You have to race in and grab a seat on the downhill side so we can get the view!"

I'll spare you the unseemly race along the platform to scramble into our carriage and bags a downhill-side-seat.  Suffice to say we made it, and without trampling on any international tourists either which was probably a good thing for Australia's global public relations.

Back down the hill we rattled, gazing out over the the hills and waving to random passers-by, rail maintenance workers, and ordinary people who had to stop to let the train go past.  Back in Belgrave we watched as the train driver and coal stokers posed and hammed it up for hordes of fascinated tourists...

OK Fred.  Let's look the part.  Lucky I remembered to iron my overalls this morning.

 

...before Roger and BD headed back home and I, grabbing an opportunity to tick the Belgrave suburban train line off my list, jumped on the train and took the long way home.  And then I had to walk home up the hill, which was very sad but I found some beautiful big gum nuts, so that was a bonus.

Getting there.