[VIC] R766 and R711 Ballarat tour.

[James Brook <ajmbrook@ozemail.com.au>]

I went on the R766 and R711 Ballarat tour today. Great job WCR! In my
opinion this was the best broad gauge tour of 1999. Anyway the train
left Spencer Street one minute late at 1021 and reached Bacchus Marsh on
time after having a great photostop on the Melton Weir Bridge. I think
we left Bacchus Marsh a little bit late, but I forgot to write down the
time. There were three great photostops up the Ingliston Bank and we
arrived at Ballarat exactly on time at 1405. The first shuttle was R766
with R711 banking to Warrenheip and then it returned to Ballarat. The
second shuttles was a parallel run to Warrenheip. R711 hauled the K and
S cars to Bungaree Loop and R766 hauled two ZD vans, a BV and 13BL
(Pioneer) to Warrenheip. The parallel run was good although the both
lines are a little bit close for this sort of trip. The up special left
Ballarat at 1727 (scheduled 1725) and was five minutes late at Ballan
(scheduled 1755, actual 1800). It then arrived at Footscray at 1905
(scheduled 1903) and arrived in Spencer Street one minute early at 1914.

I one complaint about this tour. While the headboard was left off R766
for most of the trip (which was a pleasant suprise), it was put back on
the loco at the second photostop. :-( For a tour like this where it is
the last chance to see R766 before its converted I think they should
have left it off at all photostops. Everybody has plenty of photos of
R766 with the headboard but there are hardly any photos of R766 without
the headboard. I don't think it would have killed Steamrail to have left
the headboard back at Newport today. (Note: I am not criticizing the
overall concept of the headboard in this post. Go back to the other
threads to see my arguments against the headboard. I am just criticizing
its use on this particular tour, which is a special occasion, ie: R766's
last run before conversion.)

I would also like to say that the organization and the efficiency of the
photostops was outstanding considering the number of people on the tour.
At the second photostop a kid walked out in front of the photographers
and he was banned from getting out at all other photostops. I think
organizers should ban anyone who doesn't do what they're supposed to. On
some tours (I won't name the operator here) photostops are really slow
because of the number of people who just stuff around instead of joining
the photoline. Also I think really small children should be
automatically banned from photostops because they end up getting in
people's way, crying or doing just about anything else that wrecks a
good photostop. I think all organisations should take a tougher stance
on idiots who wreck photostops and end up making the tour late because a
10 min photostop turns into a 20 min photostop. When this sort of thing
happens other photostops end up being cancelled because of the late
running.

Here are two image captures from the video of the trip. These images
will be available through the news section on my website later tonight
or you can click on these links here:

http://www.railpage.org.au/vr/pics/vidcaps/r766_r711_dtgully_rd.jpg
http://www.railpage.org.au/vr/pics/vidcaps/r766_parallel.jpg


--
- James Brook -

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