Tasmanian Railways - May 2017

May 2017 saw more trips made to several parts of Tasmania to record rail operations on the Tasrail network. We begin with what would turn out to be one of the highlights of the year so far as D class number 2020 was lifted onto a low loader at East Tamar and trucked to Bendigo in Victoria where overhauling and repainting would take place. We present scenes of this fascinating procedure as well as the bogies being transferred to a separate low loader.

Moving onto the mainline we cover 5 trains operating on the same day starting off with a late running 33 in the early morning light, 35 with triple headed locos in the Colebrook area, 31 on the Western Line, 3 DQ's on the empty ore train heading south and finally DQ 2009 working the cement train with TR03. The next day we cover the cement train with the rare use of the red DQ in place of the DV driving van at a variety of locations between Devonport and the Cement Australia plan at Railton.

We return to the Melba Line and follow triple DQ's on an early running ore train as far as Hampshire before we return to the south of the state to cover the rare use of DQ class on revenue earning services. We spend a whole morning chasing locos 2006 and 2002 beginning a few hours before the sun comes up and finally the next evening the locos return with train 34 which would eventually terminate at Bell Bay.

We end the May 2017 edition of Tasmanian Railways with triple headed TR class on 35 between Rhyndaston and Rekuna.

Filmed, narrated, edited and produced by Rowan Kinnane.

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