It’s Transport Heritage Expo time of year again! I’d forgotten about it, was too busy with other things. Then thoughts of The Train intrude. I really need to get out of the house, to give the old brain a bit of space. At first I think of catching the South Coast Line down to Berry. One of the new Mariyung trains, followed by a Endeavour rail motor. Closest thing to The Train around here.
Monday is a public holiday. But I wake up to an email on my phone, one of the websites is playing up. I confirm, can’t seem to log in. There’s one person in the server team around, in Melbourne, which has had enough public holidays until the next one (horse race). He reboots the server, another tweak from me and it is running. Now I feel like it’s too late for the South Coast.
I want to go somewhere.
There are still tickets available for the heritage train to Botany. We did it last year as a family at the Expo. At least I know what side of the train to sit on this time!
I catch the train in to Town Hall, grab some chocolates from Muji, buns from BreadTop. I really want a proper sit down lunch, but I also want to grab a good seat, so I return to Central.
Boarding isn’t until 20 minutes before departure, so there’s a lot of waiting.
There’s diesel locomotives at both ends of the seven heritage passenger carriages, a NSW 42 class in a striking yellow, white, orange and blue livery and another Candy Stripe 42 class facing out.
When I eventually board it’s not free seating. And I’ve been placed on the wrong side. Damn!
Oh well, might as well sit back and relax. But the seats are facing across a table and the old English bloke opposite wants a conversation. Then a big American sits down next to me in the aisle. He’s also a manspreader.
The other passengers are a real range of old and young intense-looking gunzels, excited families, fashionable Indian princesses with cameras and a delightful enthusiasm to use them, and some young mixed race couples so obviously in love, reminding me of my partner and I when we were younger (we’re still in love!).
On the opposite side of a train is a big old bearded kind of bikie-looking guy in a black shirt with a rainbow flag with black short shorts, tattooed legs, big earrings and flamboyant jewellery. Obviously a character!
The Englishman starts talking to the American. I put my earbuds in, set the music on. The train starts and we head out from the platform.
It’s the same route as last time. Out west past Lidcome, down through Regents Park, past the Rookwood Cemetery, a golf course fighting to not be turned into a cemetery, another golf course not under threat of cemeteries, along the freight lines through Chullora and the Enfield container yards, along where the new Bankstown metro line is undergoing testing. It’s old Sydney, then rough Sydney. Not pretty. The sky is grey, the land is hard.
Across that bridge over the passenger tracks at Sydenham, then towards the airport. I like trains, but I also like planes. Through the windows opposite I watch as we wind our way around the main north-south runway, past the hangers, turning past the east-west runway. Watch the big jets taxi, small planes flying overhead. Picture our journey next month, try to imagine the excitement and adventure.
On the other side are hotels, another bloody golf course, then the ruins of a chemical refinery, the still-functional chimneys of Orica, the bright green of reclaimed fields contrasting with the steel in an oddly beautiful way, and ending with the blocks of colour of the container loading area. This is where our journey ends.
We stop and then return the way we came. There is no swapping of seats, though sometimes my seat companions leave, giving me more precious space. I dream of the airport for a while, then it’s back into suburbia.
This time I notice the little things. The flowers and moss along the embankment, the clump of bamboo as if we are in Japan. The spray cans littering the graffiti sites. A tower of containers stacked precariously high. A photographer sitting in a tree. The old Asian female golfer with her automated golf caddy. The dramatic clouds that tower above, gaps of blue mixing with grey.
Although the windows can be opened, the flow of air is not enough to dispel the miasma of unwashed, human scented gunzel body odour. I cannot wait to be out of this train, to be able to stretch my legs without feeling the presence of someone besides me.
They heritage displays are being packed away when we make our return entrance into Central. I hurry to catch a train back. Entertain a Mariyung south, but none are running with a stop at Wolli Creek, so I just go to the Airport Line to take me home. The single seat and the cool fresh air-conditioning are a welcome relief after the stuffiness of the heritage train and its occupants.
As we pull into Padstow a young man walks past, muttering to himself, perhaps to someone on the other end of a phone line. I don’t know if it is him I hear shouting below, demanding to be left alone by someone, not to be judged, that he is the victim of childhood trauma. He has stopped by the time I make my way down. Perhaps he was vaping onboard and somebody asked him to stop, sick of his assault on their senses. I recall the posts from a homeless person that I’d read this morning, complaining of the selfish arseholes that ruin it for everyone else.
I return home tired of people, but happy to be with my people. To sit in front of that television snuggled next to B and just delight in her presence, to chat with my son about nothing.
Despite the exhaustion of others, I am glad that I got out of the house and stared at something other than a computer screen. Maybe next year I’ll catch an Expo train somewhere else. Probably not to Botany.