November Newsrail is another 40-page special, the first of two editions to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the former Mornington Peninsula railway line from Bittern to Red Hill.

Our November edition has two feature articles to commemorate historic anniversaries:

• A superb feature article on the history of the Red Hill Line by noted railway historian Michael Guiney, beautifully and comprehensively illustrated with dozens of photographs, track diagrams of stations, as well as traffic and revenue statistics. We believe this may be the first such comprehensive feature ever published on the line.
• On the occasion of the 120th anniversary of the opening of the former line from Lilydale to Warburton, we present a fascinating collection of photographs from the 1930s and 1940s of everyday traffic on the line and its adjoining timber tramways, courtesy of the Cleverdon family, who took holidays at Launching Place.

As well as historic features, we have contemporary content of interest:

• Michael Menzies documents the operational disruptions to the network that arose from the COVID-19 outbreak at staff facilities at Southern Cross Station, and the shutdown of public transport into Melbourne to thwart anti-lockdown protests
• We meet with Steamrail, 707 Operations, and Bellarine Railway for updates on restoration and overhaul efforts on locomotives K183, R707, and G33.

We have all the usual columns:

• Calendar anniversaries
• News and Announcements
• Rail works
• PTV reliability
• Tramways
• Operations and sightings
• Where is it?
• Taildisc

Our superb cover photograph of A2 986 on a recent driver training run was taken by Ben Peters.