April Newsrail is yet another big 40-page edition, boasting three feature articles as well as all our regular columns.

A beautiful evening photograph (courtesy Matt Oaten) of Y112 steaming through the appropriately-named Lovely Banks towards Ballarat introduces our main feature article, a history of the class penned by Phil Dunn. This article is the latest in the series that Phil has written on the highly-successful “standard” locomotive designs of the 1880s prepared by Edward Jeffreys.

Features Editor Mark Cauchi presents two shorter articles he has written and researched. Once concerns a terrible level crossing accident that occurred in 1940 when a truck carrying petroleum collided with a suburban train. On a much lighter note, Mark explores the earliest railfan-chartered trains, retracing a Cup Day 1938 outing by the Victorian Model Railway Society that is, as far as we know, the first. 

Enthusiast specials are also the subject of our Tourist and Heritage Rail column for this month, with Peter Donald tracing the early history of the Vintage Train, an enthusiast special that gradually led to the establishment of Steamrail. (Peter even tells how the name came about!) 

Our News section covers the commencement of X’Trapolis 2.0 construction in Ballarat while at Newport, things are winding down following the completion of the last of the 70 HCMT sets. We also look at a near miss that took place on the Belgrave Line, the future of sleeping cars on the Melbourne to Sydney Route, the design of the new Melton Station, and more.

Our other regular sections are there:

• General works
• Operations and sightings
• Tramways
• PTV service quality
• Where is it?
• Taildisc