Great film and a nice tribute to places of railway interest.

Merry Christmas Mike. Happy new year. Yes go for gold.

HQ wagon T shirt nice, merry Xmas mate

Cheers Mike best regards to you ,your family Xmas new year 2025 Looking forward to assist where ever I can Max

Thanks Mike for your great clips. Have a top Christmas and New Year. Cheers.

Missed by That Much

Merry Christmas to you and all your family, Mike

Cheers and back at ya mate!

Thanks for all your videos and interactions throughout the year Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Cheers Cobber

Merry Xmas

Cheers, Mike. Merry Christmas to you and the family. 🎉

Spent a weekend out on the line just before it was pulled up retrieving track bolts for a heritage railway. One of the volunteers got in touch with the contractor who thought we were mad but gave us permission. Managed to collect a few hundred bolts over the weekend.

Watch out for those bushfires

I cannot understand why recently the Castlemaine Maryborough Rail Trail Group were granted this year $540000 to carry out a ' pre construction assessment '. True, trains will never return on the whole section but maybe between Moolort grain silos 16km and Maryborough, since Maryborough is now part of the standard gauge national system linking all export shipping ports????

I remember checking out the branch line as a kid as we crossed over it going in and out of Horsham. The track ran next to the fence and the school oval, I don't think it even had a fence lol.

Great to check out the line with you mate!

In contrast we see how the jeparet and other lines in vic mallee still survive no bridges though

Many of those lines would still be in use had they had concrete and steel bridges . Great shots Mike There still looks to be plenty of grain traffic that could have saved the line

😀Fascinates me that it's more economical to replace one grain train with hundreds of truck trips. Especially when there were up to ten trains a day. Not to mention the freight that came in then grain out. Grain trucks can't do freight, they drive back empty.

Your videos and high production values are amazing mate - than ks so much for this content 😀

It may come as a shock to you nbut Heywood is now Standard gauge Unless Mt Gambier has a standard gauge link to the rest of the system there is no need for this line rip up rails and sell for scrap

Before coming to SA, my grandmother grew up in Neerim South and had to take at least 5 different trains to reach Casterton to see her cousin.

Love the Railway 🛤 lines and the greenery 🍃 happy holidays ❄️🍒❄️🍒

The Blue Bird Cafe scene is brilliant. The rail brought the prosperity that created that store then panning away from it's corpse reveals the B Double that changed everything.

Hi mate great video. My mum was brought up in Casterdon. When she married and lived in Melbourne, as a family we used to visit Casterdon. The line was closed then bur the tressal bridge was still there and the old railway lines. I used to walk down to the main street and there is a pathway that went across the tracks between the station and where the line stopped. Good to see a video of the Casterdon station. Cheers.

Great video and thanks for posting again. You have captured some beautiful scenery of the wonderful Western District, the region where I grew up, lived near Cavendish and went to secondary school in Hamilton. The Coleraine & Casterton railway stations have always intrigued me some what, very flash stations at the end of well you might say insignificant lines, but perhaps the quality of the buildings may have reflected each regions wealth or important people. The Hamilton railway station seems to be a rather bland building in comparison, to me it all but looks like the foyer of an Art Deco style town hall, were as the other two stations seem to me to be a typical Victorian regional Railway Station style of building. Growing up at Cavendish I remember well the closure our local line as well as the others, Branxholme also had a somewhat spiffy station in the day but it is long gone sadly. To add to this railway tale, as a young boy, probably 7 or 8 our local school travelled from Hamilton to Warrnambool by train and return, so that must have been around 1974 ish. Possibly this is where my attraction for all things railway comes from. Thanks for the clip again, cheers, Andy in Adelaide.

👍

👍

You put some effort into this. The production quality is better than many 'professionals'. Well done. 🏆

I lived next to the track south of Mt Barker. Having a steam loco come past never got tiring.

Good vid. I remember catching the train to Mt Gambier. Amazing how many rail lines there once were in this part of the world. Now there aren't even busses connecting the towns.

Another good video,thanks. Worked on both lines in the mid 60s. Not Carsterton.

In this modern world there are so many people Vlogging about Aviation which opened up the world to those who can afford and have the desire to travel, also to deliver freight that people/companies want delivered in a more timely manner than by sea. It’s easily forgotten now that Railways opened up continents and are equally an important part of transport history. Very much enjoying your content. Cheers

You've probably moved on since you have uploaded this footage, however having just seen your Chowilla dam branch footage, I wanted to advise you, as you were in the Hamilton area of the short lived cross country line from Dunkeld to Penshurst which has quite a lot of archaelogy remaining. As far as I know the line was very short lived.

Fascinating Mike.

I remember the Derm rail motors being used on these two lines ,

Another line in Victoria the line to Bright was closed simply because two huge tresstles on it needed replacement.

Be interesting Mike to find out a quote to re timber one of those trestles. Once you have found those handsome gum trees I guess permits would be required to fell them. Nothings cheap or easy these days

Your doing a fantastic job with the channel. Thanks for sharing. Keep up the good work. Much appreciated. 👍

I’m really intrigued by that picture of an R class. Looks nothing like any R class I know!

It’s appalling that the state can’t run a passenger service to Hamilton. The line from Ararat is indirect and the VR ran a rail motor. Resd the history of “The Battle of the Coloured Lines” where there was debate about the route the rail should run to Hamilton. One proposal was to extend the Mortlake line.

Great video.

Thanks Mike once again cheers max

This was typical of many line closures in Victoria and New South Wales repairs and replacement of wooden trestles . The coonabarabran line in New South Wales was a graphic example it had several costly badly maintained wooden trestles

The reason both theses lines closed was the projected cost of replacing those two long wooden trestles It All comes down to future revenue over track repair .

Great stuff......these lines built a nation.

Thanks Mike for this video! 👍

When i was a kid we'd visit friends in Dartmoor and I'd know we were almost there when we crossed the line on Ascot St, I'd always wondered what kind of trains went through there, being so remote I couldn't imagine it. I used to like to imagine Red Hens making that long journey 😂