Trams, Trains, and More Trains!

This weekend we ventured out of the City to the East into the Dandenong mountains. (They call them mountains, but they are really more like hills.) There is a historic railway there called the "Puffing Billy" that provides a scenic tour of the area. It came pretty highly recommended, so we decided to give it a shot. The Puffing Billy was established in 1900 to provide transportation from Melbourne into the rural areas to the East. The original line shut down in the early 50's as road transport improved, but it was restored and reopened several decades later as a scenic ride. The steam-powered locomotives and railcars are original from the early 1900's.

We started and ended our Puffing Billy journey at the Belgrave Station. Our first stop was for a quick 15 minutes at Menzies Creek. Our final stop before our return was at a small town called Emerald. We ate a nice lunch there at a small cafe. We then grabbed some coffee to go, which was great because the ride home was a bit chilly!

The whole experience was really fun. Our favorite part was seeing all of the green scenery. It reminded us a lot of Pacific Northwest - something we have missed since living in California.

This is a picture to show the steam in the air from the train - it made a neat picture!

An old bridge we went across on our way home.

Here's a little video we got of the ride!

It actually turned out to be a "train day" because in order to get to the Puffing Billy station (about an hour from our apartment) we took a Metro Train. Melbourne's public transit system is primarily comprised of trams in the inner suburbs (one of the biggest tram networks in the world), and trains running to the outer suburbs. We have used trams (and buses), but this was our first experience on the train system. It actually went quite smoothly - we were very impressed! As you can see, the all-electric Metro trains are a little more modern than the Puffing Billy!