A train ride

 

About three weeks ago, when we were on our way to Melbourne for a medical appointment for J, we broke down with an automatic transmission fault.

That's resolved now, but J had had to reschedule her appointment, and the hospital was very helpful and squeezed us into the consultant's schedule.

Due to other commitments, we didn't have the time for an overnight stay in the city, and we certainly didn't want to drive there and back in a day - it's near enough 300km each way, and these days (getting old) I find long drives after dark a  tad stressful.

So we decided to go by train. Not only is it ludicrously cheap at just over $10 for two seniors tickets due to the daily fare cap, the fairly skeletal service of three trains each way does mean you can get down and back in a day.

There's a connecting bus service from Beechworth that leaves at 0630 to connect with the 0740 train at Wangaratta, and also a bus back, but the schedule means that even though the train gets in at around 2045, we wouldn't be home until nearly 2200.

So we drove down to Wangaratta.

Up at 0515 - tea and toast, and leaving our lightly bemused felines with double serves of cat nuts and extra water, and off as the sun came up driving down through late autumn mist. 

While the car's thermometer said 4C when we left it was down to -1C by the time we dropped down into the Ovens valley, and not much higher by the time we got to the train station.

Half the carpark was closed off due to works connected with the track realignment for the new high capacity inland freight line, but I managed to find a spot, so in we trekked to the station.

The train arrived on time, and while busy, was not overcrowded. We'd had the foresight to bring some water and a couple of muesli bars with us, for as usual V/line was under the delusion it was offering a buffet service.

It wasn't. 

As usual the coffee machine was out of order, and this time they claimed to have an operating buffet. That's not as great as it sounds as the buffet was in the front three cars - the train consisted of two three car sets coupled together - and we were in the rear three car set.

Unlike some other railway operators, for example on some Scotrail trains, V/line's Vlocity trains don't have a way of providing a link between the sets when they couple trains together, which meant that the buffet might as well have been in Darwin for all the use it was.

Grumbles aside, and despite the obligatory inexplicable stop in some post industrial wasteland outside of Craigieburn, the train did arrive on time.

The hospital is in Malvern on the Frankston line so we hopped on a Metro train that claimed to be running through to Frankston. This was a complete lie, despite all the signage in Southern Cross claiming it was going to Frankston, and all the onboard signage agreeing about its ultimate destination, it terminated at Flinders Street.

Complete pain in the bottom, but fortunately there was a train on the next platform that was not only going to Frankston, but after South Yarra was running express to Malvern.

We'd had a tentative plan for a coffee and a muffin at a cafe we liked in Malvern, but we were running late and decided to walk directly to the hospital.

We might have missed the cafe, but I think it had gone.

As it was, it turned out for the best as J's consultant asked "have you eaten?", and when she said not since around eight this morning, he replied "Good, I need you to have these extra tests today if possible".

So, after a visit to the hospital's pathology lab we ended up having lunch in the hospital cafe at around half past two in the afternoon.

Our train back to Wangaratta didn't leave till six that evening, which gave us an hour or three to kill.

Completely out of ideas, we hopped on a tram down Wattletree road to the National Gallery, which not only has a more than reasonable collection, has quite a nice cafe, which late in the afternoon wasn't busy, so we had a cup of tea and looked at the art.

After the gallery closed, we got the tram to the station.

We knew V/line would be incapable of providing any catering worth a damn on the train, so our idea was to pick up some designer take out sandwiches. 

Before the pandemic Southern Cross sported a range of interesting take out sandwich shops, but these have mostly been replaced by variants on the fatburger and fries theme.

However, there's also a Woolworths Metro in the station, and we picked up some fruit, some fairly boring but fresh enough ham and cheese sandwiches, and by mistake a bag of some quite peculiar chips made out of a mix of taro and sweet potato that tasted like salty crisp foam rubber - basically a vegetarian equivalent to a Pringle.

Even though we had half an hour to spare, our train was waiting and the green door lights were lit, so despite the people sitting and waiting on the platform, I tried one of the doors, and it opened, so we hopped on, to be followed by everyone else who hadn't realised the train was ready for boarding.

We left on time and rattled through the dark dark night - country rail stations and country towns in Victoria have pretty poor street lighting on the whole - and arrived more or less on time.

When we got home we were greeted by a pair of yowling cats wondering where we had got to, and the discovery we were out of whisky, so we ended up finishing the Christmas cooking brandy in a pair of lukewarm brandy lime and sodas - we were out of ice as well.

However, it gave us that 'Aah' moment when you sit down after a long day.

Despite my being rude about V/line's service they did get us there and bring us home on time, and all in all we had a pretty successful, if long day ...