Anderson to Wonthaggi

This was trip was not on the original holiday plan, and in it was in fact a last minute and very ad-hoc decision to check this trail out. The plan had to be altered due to the hire bike I ended up with, would not be able to stand up to the original idea of checking out the Erica to Thompson rail trail. So a southerly detour was made to South Gippsland.

After experiencing very warm conditions while travelling down from the North of the State, I should have remembered the sort of weather that only South Gippsland can put on, even in the height of Summer. A mighty wind was blowing in from Bass Strait, complete with low scudding grey clouds and lashing rain. Not really my favourite bike riding weather. The first job was to position the car at the end of the track, at Wonthaggi, so I stopped near the Kilcunda trestle bridge to get some photos of the bleakness. However, by the time I returned to the starting point at Anderson, blue skies had returned with cheery sunshine. The gale was still blowing, and from the direction it was intended to travel, but this was only a 16 km trip, so therefore manageable.

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Lilydale to Woori Yallock

I rode the Warburton to Woori Yallock section of this trail about a year ago, which was duly reported on the blog I had going at the time. I enjoyed it so much I was determined to return and complete it from the Lilydale end. And so it came to pass, after completing the Beechworth Trail, we set forth towards Lilydale on Melbourne’s Eastern Outskirts.

The actual line from Lilydale to Warburton opened in 1901. The carried both goods (especially timber) and passengers, until 1964 when the passenger services ceased. The line was closed to all traffic in 1965 and was dismantled during 70’s. It has been reported that the line closed due to local busing interests getting into the ear of influential politicians, but I cannot confirm this. Anyway, with the rail trail, the corridor is maintained, as are all the bridges except for that which used to cross the Maroondah Highway, and a small section leased to a local school. I can’t help but think they might need that alignment in the future.

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Beechworth to Everton

“Thrill Ride”

After completing the ride to Linton, the cars were pointed towards Victoria’s north eastern hight country and with bikes attached, headed for the town of Beechworth. The plan was to have a quick look at the the trail at Tallangatta, however a spot of gunzelling enroute at a small tram museum at Haddon had us running too late for that.

Last year, I rode the trail from Wangaratta to Bright, and noticed that there was a branch up to Beechworth which split off just past Everton. As much as I wanted to visit the town and ride the trail, the near constant 1 in 30 uphill grade intimidated me somewhat. So during the intervening year, the means were plotted whereby the trail could be explored in the down hill direction. Enroute, one of the cars was left at the Everton pub, to provide a means of recovering the vehicle with the bikes that was to complete the journey up the hill to Beechworth.

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Ballarat to Linton

When I used to live in the Western District of Victoria as a yoof, the line from Ballarat to Skipton was still open. The line meandered across the Glenelg Highway a couple of times, but I never did see a train on it in all those times my family traveled that highway towards Ballarat and Melbourne. Up until when I left the district in 1976, there was a rail motor service use to convey kids to school from Skipton and other points along the line. The line closed completely in 1988.

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Riding the Rail Trails

While the main part of the site deals with the recording of stations and infrastructure as they were disappearing, the ‘blog’ part of this site deals with the more recent scenes from those old sites – long after closure and in most cases, after total dismantling of the infrastructure.

Now there are rail trails, where you can explore the alignments of the dismantled branch lines,  from the comfort of your bicycle (or horse) and try to get the feel for what it was like when the railway and it’s people were there.

This part of the site is basically my personal blog of trips done on the rail trails.

I first began visiting the some Victorian Rail trails in December, 2009 and recorded them on a Blogger site. The posts are still there to read.

In Jan 2011 I went back to  Victoria to explore some more trails. This (modified due to the Queensland Floods) trip is recorded in the following posts. This post is ‘stickied’ meaning it remains at the top  of the post list. The rest of the posts are sorted by most recent from the top.

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