Overland 29/6

["James C" <noemail@emailsux.com>]

On Thursday 29/6 last week I took the Overland to Adelaide from Melbourne.
Upon arrival at SSS the length of the train surprised me. With 9 carriages:

<----Adelaide
BL33 (Steel link)+motorail+Baggage car with smoking lounge+Coach
(Purpawi)+Coach (Mururi)+Coach (Chalaki)+Kookaburra Club Car+ Kookaburra
club car+Roomate (Allambi) + Twinette (Yankai)+Twinette (Tawari)+ an Indian
Pacific twinette with deluxe sleeper +Power car.

Altogether 11 carriages. J104 doing the motorail wagon shunting. All the
first class passengers gather around Kookaburra club car enjoy their
champagne. By looking inside the club car carefully there are luggage rack
and reading lights still there and toilet sign at the end of the carriage
suggested this carriage used to be a coach class carriage. The club car is
no where near luxury nor touched by the famous designer who designed Indian
Pacific/Ghan/Queenslander/Sunlander/Spirit of tropic/GSPE and Spirit of
Outback. Nevertheless the train was very full especially first class
sleeper, despite airline undercut the price by 2$ and coach class being 20$
dearer then Firefly.

Slowly leaving Spencer street yard and 4D watching us underneath the Latrobe
Street overbridge. The train is dead slow between Newport and SSS, pick up
speed afterwards. However some cars on parallel highway have no trouble of
over taking us. The ride was smooth; much better and quieter then XPT
sleeper despite my cabinet is directly above the wheel.

Very next day train was 20 minutes late into Adelaide Keswick station due to
number of speed restriction and concrete sleeper exchange program. It seems
to me everyone enjoyed the trip.

Keswick station's BG is very much rusty, several unuse carriages in the
yard, some full of griffiti. Conference car was there, so was entertainment
carriage and VIP car.

A lounge car looked like Ghan's Oasis bar park at the siding on platform 1.

Cheers
James