Monday Morning Photo. 23/05/2010.

G'day all, I probably should have started here last week.....sometime during the winter of 1962 I set off to make the round trip Melbourne-Sydney-Broken Hill-Adelaide-Melbourne. This was only my second foray interstate, the first had been a bit of a toe in the water, Sydney, stay overnight and come back home so the round trip via Broken Hill was the first real adventure and I'll go into it in more detail at a later time.

So the first stop was Sydney, I was travelling with Tim Caffin and we arrived in Sydney on a Sunday morning, probably aboard "The Spirit of Progress" and we had the day to fill in before leeving that night at 9.40 pm on the Forbes Mail so after the obligatory trip around the underground loop and an exploration of Everleigh Loco we set off for Liverpool on a single decker suburban electric. At Liverpool we changed to the train hauled by 3099 and the attached photo shows it at Campbelltown station, Platform 3. Outer suburban travel behind a 30 class tank was by no means unusual in New South Wales back then but it certainly was an eye opener to a couple of young fellas from Victoria.

So over to Platform 1 via the footbridge, grab the photo of 3099 on the way, and there at the platform was 3030 trailing the usual single car. Looking at Table 10, I think we probably travelled on the 1.57pm from Central to arrive back at 6.20pm in plenty of time for some tucker before our 9.40pm departure for Parkes and Broken Hill on "The Mail".

I don't remember too much of that trip, I mostly slept, except that there were eight of us in our eight passenger compartment leaving Central and I do remember too howling out through the inner west behind a 46 class electric. It was nothing like what I was used to leaving Melbourne on a country train and usually dribbling along behind an all stations suburban. It was very impressive.

By the way if anyone has an email address for Tim, and if he wouldn't mind it being passed on to me I'd like to forward this posting to him.

Regards,

Peter Bruce.