A truly legendary journey

["Lachlan Smith" <lsmith@senet.com.au>]

I travelled on the "daylight" Ghan from Adelaide to Melbourne last
Wednesday - an experience I definitely do not want to repeat:

The train experienced major technical difficulties near Salisbury and as a
result did  not arrive in Keswick until about 9:30am (as opposed to the
scheduled 7:45am).
This didn't bother me too much, but I really felt for those in transit from
Perth, having arrived on an early running Indian Pacific at 5:35am that
morning.

On boarding the train (travelling coach), it was discovered that there were
major problems with the seat allocation, with family members placed on
opposite sides of the carriage and some even scattered between carriages.
It took about an hour for the frustrated stewardess to rearrange everybody
so they were sitting where and with whom they wanted to.

I was happy with my seat, until the lady in front insisted on shutting the
blind, using some bazaar story about the sun on the glass affecting the air
conditioning. I sure as hell wasn't going to sit next to a closed window
for 12+ hours, and managed to convince her that the 12 degree temperatures
outside made the air conditioning unnecessary.

The train eventually began moving at about 11:10am, only to stop after
about 20m to wait for a freight train. We finally departed at 11:30am -
well over two hours late.

The journey through the hills was exceptionally slow - one loco hauling 27
cars.

The journey was then uneventful until Gheringhap, when we were told we
would be waiting an hour to cross 2 outbound freights. However, this was
not to be, and we were on the move again after 15 minutes. 

We finally arrived in Spencer Street at 12:30am  - as opposed to the
scheduled 21:05pm. I then had to wait while my half of the train was
shunted to platform 2.

I finally stepped onto the platform at about 1:15am, having been on the
train for over 15 hours - I could have been New York had I been flying :)

I accept little blame can be laid on GSR, nevertheless, it was a truly
awful train trip. I have since learned the same train has made up no time,
and has indeed lost a great deal more. I believe that it is now likely that
GSR will have to cancel a service in order to get back on schedule

Lachlan
ADELAIDE