Today 4 of us went to Kiama, a seaside village about 100km south of Sydney for a birthday lunch at a most excellent restaurant by the beach. We went on The Picnic Train, a historic train which is pulled by a steam engine. Well, a steam engine with a bit of assistance at the back from a 421 class diesel-electric engine, I have to admit. The diesel rarely makes an appearance in the company's videos, though it's not really a cheat; the 421 class dates from 1965 to 1966, so they aren't that much younger than the steam engine.

The train does day trips along some of the more picturesque routes of the NSW railway system. It will do one track (say, Kiama, which is really its signature route) for a few weekends, then move to say the Hunter Valley north of Sydney, or out to the Blue Mountains for a couple of weeks.

The train starts at Tempe, which is a few kilometres out of Sydney on the main southern line, then stops to pick up passengers at Sutherland (on the southern outskirts of Sydney), Wollongong, then Kiama. Obviously there was no point in us getting on at Wollongong since we'd miss some of the best scenery, so we drove back to Sutherland to meet it there.

The engine is (train nerd alert) number 5917, a two cylinder, superheated, coal fired D59 class locomotive which was built by the Baldwin-Lima-Hamilton corporation of Philadelphia between 1952 and 1953. Used on NSW railways until its retirement in 1972, it's a 2-8-2 Mikado style. (2 leading wheels, 8 powered wheels and 2 trailing wheels.)

There are various types of seating, from 8 person private compartments, to 4 seat booths with really, really soft, comfortable seats (as there were in the days of yore; we had one of those), to lounge cars.

It's not really a cheap day out, but it's an experience well worth treating yourself or your family to in my opinion. It's an experience that allows you to step back in time in a way that's rare, and that has a value all its own.

In this image the locomotive and its water gin are at the platform in Kiama getting ready for the return trip. The carriages are back up the line, and will be brought back about 20 minutes later by the 421 class diesel. I liked the way the steam wrapped around the locomotive in the shot, and since it is from that classic Agatha Christie era, I decided that a mid-century mono with just a touch of sepia would be the best way to present it.