On Monday, 11th of March, MHS Railway Interest Group hosted an extremely exciting, immersive, and one-of-a-kind day-long excursion to Steamrail’s Newport Workshop and Museum Open Day. The aim and purpose of this excursion was to explore and immerse ourselves into the history of our beloved railway system while taking a break from the stresses of school and studying.
We began our day by meeting at the Newport Bus Interchange at around 10:30am and taking a vintage bus from the early 1970s to the Newport Workshops. At the Newport Workshops, we were fortunate enough to explore and even sit inside the “Red Rattler” Tait Sets (which was the second oldest train in Melbourne’s Surburban Railway History), the Silver Hitachis, the V-Line Velocity train, and plenty of preserved carriages from well over 100 years ago in 1st, 2nd and 3rd class. Additionally, we enjoyed pizza and chips for lunch, which were all conveniently sold on site, as well as seeing a huge display of local railway projects and workshops. Upon travelling to the Newport Museum, we continued our exploration by seeing the Harris carriages from the late 1950s, preserved locomotives, the old Metcard ticketing booth from the early 2000s and train collections. Lastly, it was already 3pm before we knew it, so we travelled back to the bus interchange by taking another vintage bus and finally called it a day at Newport Station.
Thank you to everyone who came and helped make the excursion so memorable, special and successful (for the most part), in spite of the excruciating train horns and the scorching 38-degree summer heat. Additionally, a special thank you to Ms. Beanland for going out of her way to supervise the entire day, despite somehow getting lost on at least two separate occasions. Nonetheless, we cannot wait to host more and bigger excursions as the year goes on, such as the Diamond Valley Railway excursion over the Term 1 Holidays.
