Into the White
Jul. 25th, 2011 01:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sharplittleteethWe caught a steam train to the snow yesterday.
It was one of the tours run by Steamrail Victoria, a non-profit organisation dedicated to restoring and operating vintage trains.
Taking this tour meant getting up at stupidly-early o'clock on a Sunday morning. But it was worth it when we saw the steam locomotive pull into Flinders Street Station. A. has a photo on her Flickr account.
We had booked first class tickets, in the heated carriage. It was a lovely old thing, built in the 1920s, all pressed tine ceilings and wooden walls. Unfortunately, the heating was playing up. Never mind. It actually seemed sort of romantic to me, a reminder of how old the train was, and that it was maintained purely by volunteers.
The train rattled and wheezed out to Moe, where we caught coaches up to Mount St. Gwinear.
And there, A. saw her first ever snow.
Mist hung between the snow gums. A gently snow was falling. A. discovered that if you held your hand out, you could actually see the individual snowflakes land, and make out their crystalline patterns in the few brief seconds before they melted.
Snow is pretty cool, A. said.
We ran around, built some really crappy snowmen, took lots of photos, and used the composting toilets (composting toilets + snow = cold wind right up your jacksie).
After a couple of hours, we caught the coaches back down the mountain, and arrived back in Moe an hour early. To kill the time we bought hot chips from the local fish and chip shop. There's not much to do in Moe at 4:30 on a Sunday.
The train pulled in. We climbed aboard, and began our journey home.
The lights in the first class carriage failed somewhere outside Pakenham, so we rattled home through the mist and the darkness, dreamlike and otherworldly in our beautiful old train.
It was one of the tours run by Steamrail Victoria, a non-profit organisation dedicated to restoring and operating vintage trains.
Taking this tour meant getting up at stupidly-early o'clock on a Sunday morning. But it was worth it when we saw the steam locomotive pull into Flinders Street Station. A. has a photo on her Flickr account.
We had booked first class tickets, in the heated carriage. It was a lovely old thing, built in the 1920s, all pressed tine ceilings and wooden walls. Unfortunately, the heating was playing up. Never mind. It actually seemed sort of romantic to me, a reminder of how old the train was, and that it was maintained purely by volunteers.
The train rattled and wheezed out to Moe, where we caught coaches up to Mount St. Gwinear.
And there, A. saw her first ever snow.
Mist hung between the snow gums. A gently snow was falling. A. discovered that if you held your hand out, you could actually see the individual snowflakes land, and make out their crystalline patterns in the few brief seconds before they melted.
Snow is pretty cool, A. said.
We ran around, built some really crappy snowmen, took lots of photos, and used the composting toilets (composting toilets + snow = cold wind right up your jacksie).
After a couple of hours, we caught the coaches back down the mountain, and arrived back in Moe an hour early. To kill the time we bought hot chips from the local fish and chip shop. There's not much to do in Moe at 4:30 on a Sunday.
The train pulled in. We climbed aboard, and began our journey home.
The lights in the first class carriage failed somewhere outside Pakenham, so we rattled home through the mist and the darkness, dreamlike and otherworldly in our beautiful old train.
no subject
Date: 2011-07-25 11:37 pm (UTC)This seems like an awesome thing to do. I have only seen snow once, briefly, and I should like to explore it more.
To be fair...
no subject
Date: 2011-07-26 02:34 am (UTC)Snow is a lot of fun. I can see why people would enjoy cross-country skiing. It's like bushwalking, but with snow.