I did not sleep so well last night and was up fairly early. I spent a leisurely morning In I did not sleep so well last night and was up fairly early. I spent a leisurely morning In spite of the heat, I slept well. Perth is five hours behind New Zealand so I am a wee bit out of kilter!
I packed some of my things into a small bag I had brought with me as I am off to Kalgoorlie tomorrow. This was the centre of the gold mining industry and has been around for a long time, they still mine for gold and I have a trip booked for Wednesday to visit the Super Pit. I ate breakfast, made egg sandwiches for my trip and finished off my packing. We were set to depart at 3.15 pm and arrive in Kalgoorlie at 9.50 pm. The train is called the Prospector and was fairly comfortable.
As Edgar and Margaret baby sit one of their grandsons, I was dropped off nice and early, never bothers me being early no chance of missing my train then!! I grabbed a coffee, it was very pleasant and when I asked for extra hot, I got it, lol!!
The train was already in the station being prepared for the trip and the one that leaves Kalgoorlie at 7.05 am arrived bang on time at 1.45 pm, Amtrak could well learn a lesson for Transwa, lol!?
We departed on time and I was able to swap seats for a large window seat once a head count had been carried out after the first stop. Booking on-line does not allow for a seat request! There is air conditioning on board but it is at a pleasant level, I had been told that another group had said it was very cold!
The seats are airplane style and there is reasonable leg room space. Each seat has its own personal entertainment system, a few movies, TV, Audio etc. There is also a Driver Cam to see what is coming,
There is a sameness about the countryside, lots of scrub with gum trees. There also appears to be a lot of sandstone around these parts. There are many farms dotted around but I did not see very many animals. As we travelled inland, the land had obviously been more cultivated so there were more farms and sheep! We passed a couple of small towns along the way.
I took a few minutes to download some of the photos I took yesterday from my camera to my IPad via WiFi within the camera. This is very cool as I do not have my laptop with me! I had tried yesterday without any luck but all I needed was Sony's Play Memories app!
At a place called Merredin, we met the Prospector from Kalgoorlie to Perth. We were allowed out to stretch our legs while the crews swapped trains. By this time, night was almost upon us.
At one point, the driver spoke to us to tell us he had to walk up the track a ways to check things out as there had been a signal failure on this section! The driver did try to make up time and we hit 160 kph for a short time!
We finally arrived in Kalgoorlie almost one hour late, I must have brought the Amtrak spirit with me, lol!! I hailed a taxi to take me to my hotel.
No comments:
Post a Comment