With the sun beating down to hide a false temperature in the South Korean snow, we were heading on the road to Pyongyang, North Korea, just near Dorasan Station. An unfamiliar eerie-ness accompanied the trip to Dorasan, from Paju. The significance of Dorasan Station is that it’s in South Korea, but the track connects to…
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After four months I’ve finally gotten round to condensing this one and finishing it off. Nine parts in total on what was an excellent day on board the steam locomotive along the West Coast Wilderness Railway. I did it alone which was probably the only bad thing – wish I had someone there with me…
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After tasting the honey at Lower landing it was onwards past two station stops, neither of which are used any longer…but added a bit of history to the journey…we passed by the King River several times. An excellent view out of the train window coming round a corner. Just after this we got to “Teepookana”…
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We didn’t stop at this remote location on our railway through the Tasmanian wilderness. It was once a train stop known as Campspur, but it’s no longer a stop. There is a platform there but no station. Steel house structures remain to show where the “campsite” and buildings (rather huts) once were. What…
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So from our peak at Rinadeena, it was time to head downhill from the mines and into an area, barely a village named Dubbil Barril, note the strange spelling as opposed to Double Barrel. The rainforest route on the way down was totally amazing, we past gorges. We must have gone…
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WEST COAST WILDERNESS RAILWAY PART FOUR – LUNCH AT RINADEENA (RAINDROP) So I left behind the remote mining village of Lynchford, for this lifetime at least. This is where the train tracks got steeper and became a railway incline, as part of the famous “rack and pinion” system. I had already been on the…
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It’s sounds a bit silly if I say “I’ve always been interested in railways”, because I say that about so many things. But there is something inspiring about being onboard a train. There’s history, character, atmosphere, geography, music involved in train journeys. And Michael Palin has a series called “The World’s Great Train Journeys.” I…
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WEST COAST WILDERNESS RAILWAY PART THREE – SEARCHING FOR GOLD AT LYNCHFORD The journey from Queenstown to Lynchford is probably around 12 kilometres. The magic had already begun as soon as we left Queenstown. We were travelling on a track through the middle of nowhere. A work of engineering genius, which had taken years…
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I had only 40 minutes in Queenstown, and although it was small, I quickly looked at what I wanted to see. In the end, just walking round the town for 30 minutes was enough time to “see” it all, if not experience an overnight stay in this quite remarkable little enclave. I…
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I have always enjoyed railways and train journeys. As a kid it was spotting the different stations on the Bangor – Belfast train line. My home country of Northern Ireland is hardly blessed with a lot of train lines. I grew up about 5 miles from the nearest station, and my birthtown of Newtownards…
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