Steam Train travel time?

The old Aramac to Barcaldine line was 42 miles long. The train took 10 hours. The saying went that the driver could chuck a handful of daisy seeds out of the cab and by the time the guards van came up to the spot the guard could lean out and pick daisies. A more likely tale is the one where a swagman was packing up his camp near the line when the driver leaned out and offered a lift. "No thanks mate, I'm in too much of a hurry".

Trains in steam age Australia would often stop at unoccupied halts in the middle of nowhere and do nothing but stand there.

When General MacArthur said his famous line on the platform at Terowie he may not have been talking about his defeat at the hands of the Japanese, but his smeg-knows-how-long trip from Alice Springs on the Ghan, the train that followed a calendar, not a timetable. The one aboard which a heavily pregnant woman annoyed the conductor over timetabling issues when he finally demanded to know why she had got on such a legendarily slow and oft-delayed service if she was that close to term. Her answer: "I wasn't even pregnant when I got on!" Everyone on the train would often find themselves camped out while waiting for fettlers to fix a spot in the track, the crew having to keep weapons and ammo to hunt game to feed the passengers. Soldiers being transported northwards during the Second World War assigned the train a theme song -"I'll Walk Beside You".

Then there was the service to a small town which was scheduled to come in at 11:50 by which you set your watch- if it was 11:50 and there was any sign of the train coming, your watch needed adjusting. Once it did seem to come in on time and a huge fuss was made in the town until the driver confessed that it wasn't even that days train, but the previous days.

VGR standards for a trip was a stop for crew change and water every 60 miles or so, smeg knows how long for all Spencer Streets precious paperwork before the train could move again.

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