Courtesy of my wife who wanted to attend the Bungendore Sunday markets, our family went on the Bungendore Market Day steam special today. It was quite the adventure and we learnt a lot about trains in Canberra, passengers and Bungendore Markets.
Steam trains in Canberra are run by the ARHS, ACT Division and are somewhat at the mercy of Railcorp. Setting aside the rich history of rail in NSWGR, ARHS has to be doing the right thing to maintain access to the rail assets that allow them to run specials out of Canberra station. This means staying behind the yellow line :-) A funny thing though is that no maintenance is carried out by Railcorp on the line to Bungendore, at least in terms of trimming the greenery, making it bad to lean out the windows any at all, not for the usual signs and infrastructure but for foliage. Budding wattles are just the thing to tear at you and your belongings, or would be had I not ducked back in time.
The full feed first class experience leaves you with no need to lunch at the markets and it was a good thing to as we had limited market time after a somewhat late exit from Canberra Station. Giving passengers coach numbers AND putting the numbers in the coaches would help people alighting at departure and ease the burden on the ARHS volunteers I am sure. First class does not quite have the cachet one might desire when Little Johnny in the row of seats behind is "hungry" despite the spread of morning and afternoon tea being more than enough for my teenage son whose legs require some filling. Luck of the draw and the challenges of parenting and passengering in the modern era I guess.
There may be a fine book store in Bungendore that is not a firetrap with enough dust for a family of asthmatics and enough dark corners to satisfy Australia's love of nocturnal mammals but we visited the other bookstore. The one that was all those things and more, having driven past many times before and been curious, our curiosity is now truly satisfied. The markets at the town hall was full of friendly people selling a variety of things such that we came away with a tray of baked pastry things, floor mats made for fair trade by families in third world countries, wooden coasters, a hand towel for the oven, capsicum relish, goat soap, a huge avocado and a potted pansy. Be warned there is a lolly shop on one of the main streets that sells all those odd things you can only get in proper lolly shops. Sadly we did not have as much time as we might have liked but then time is money and in this case not having enough time may have saved us money. That and meeting a bookshop where we did not buy any books and will never visit again.
3016 did a great job of handling things and with a breather to build more steam on the return rise and a beautiful hill start (no slipping the clutch or handbrake here folks!) the trip was made in good time through typically Australian country side and many photos were taken, and many discarded :-) Enough ramblings, here is a selection of photos of our day with much thanks to ARHS, the marketers of Bungendore and my family who put up with smoke and ash for a good day out.
