Autumn

Autumn is a magnificent time of year in our area, and today was superb!  There are a lot of events happening this weekend and also next weekend, being Easter.  A new museum is opening just south of us and although my expectations were pretty low as to what it would be like I decided to go for a drive and have a look.  If all else failed the drive along the New England Highway would be enjoyable, and it was!

The first stop was Wallangarra Station, where rather surprisingly I found our local steam train ready to depart.

Wallangarra is interesting in that it is a break-of gauge station, and the border of the states of New South Wales and Queensland actually runs through the platform.  In days past the Queensland 3' 6" gauge trains would pull into one side of the platform and the New South Wales 4' 8 1/2" gauge trains would pull in on the other side.  The Queensland line is still open and well maintained, though these days only used by heritage trains, but the New South Wales line is very much closed, though still in place.  There is a very active Railway Museum group in Tenterfield, but obviously it would be an enormous and expensive task to re-open the line north to the border, but it would be a wonderful trip if they did!

A major hurdle to re-opening the line is this superb old bridge.  Sadly, it looks like it's going to fall down very soon, but line re-opening or not it should be preserved, though that's pretty unlikely too. 

There was quite a gathering of cars at the new Museum, though mostly a lot newer than I'm interested in.  You rarely see true Vintage or Veteran cars out here in the country these days, though I'm assuming they still get together in the bigger cities.  Anyway there were a couple of really nicely restored classics amongst the gathering, and here is a beautiful Ford Zephyr from about 1955.

Having just returned home now after a really fun barbecue with friends at our local National Park, I'd have to say that it was a pretty good day all round!!