Riding The Cooma Monaro Railway

No riding anymore, just looking at the way train travel used to be through Cooma, a town about an hour south of Canberra. Like a lot of small town train stations, once the rail line in Cooma stopped stopping, the station became a museum.

The railway station exterior. Built in 1889 in the classic, "Railway Gothic" style, it's known as a roadside station.

On the platform side, a cart full of luggage. "I'm not joking, come claim your bag or it's going in the rubbish bin." The stationmaster has a nice office. Map on the wall says where the trains go. Safe by the desk says where the money goes. Keep it all moving...

Leveraging the train movements from inside the signal box shed. Blue is for boy trains, red is for girl trains. Right?

Ugh, so much paperwork. Rules and regulations, engineman's daily report, your identity card, journals, when does it end? At least passengers get to clean up. Who knew little travel soap could be collectible?

The big station water supply tank up on a hill.

Dy-No-Mite! Way out on its own, a box car filled with explosive supplies. The Cooma station is near the big Snowy Mountain Hydro project, a giant engineering complex of dams, reservoirs, power plants. Lots of blowing up mountains and taming rivers.

No trains, no need for a big turntable to keep them organized. Back to weeds.