A Trip North
Every now and again … and likely to be every month for the for next few months … Toni and I have to drive up to Rockhampton and back in the same day. The highway doesn’t really touch the northern railway line till just after Calliope and from then on the road and the railway line run quite close together right through to Rockhampton.
That part of the northern line is coal country and you really should be able to see plenty of trains but until last Tuesday we had hardly seen a train on the line during our Rockhampton trips. Last Tuesday more than made up for it though and we ended up seeing four coal trains and three freighters.
Unfortunately I only got to photograph one down coalie running back to the mines and I couldn’t get across the level crossing in time to grab a photo of it with the sun behind me. I really only had time to put the handbrake on, dig the camera out from under the seat and turn it on before the train was almost on me.
Leading the train is 4044 with one of the new 41 class in the shafts – further back in the train acting as distributed power was 4032. The last time I’d seen that loco was the year before last when it was under construction at Walkers/EDI at Maryborough.
There was some interesting motive power in Rockhampton yard too but there were too many poles in the way and we didn’t even bother getting out of the car and we just missed a 2200 class on an up work train running down the middle of the street on the northern approach to Rockhampton yard.
We’ll be back in a month so we might do better then.