October Newsrail has forty pages of great content that starts with an eye-catching image of current and former V/Line passenger power on Ballarat’s Warrenheip Bank, taken by Brenden Schonfelder.

Generations of railfans have watched locomotives doing battle with Warrenheip Bank, hauling heavy loads heading east from Ballarat, whether grain trains heading for Geelong, or the former broad-gauge Overland to Melbourne. At the top of that famous bank, for over one hundred years, stood Warrenheip Station, where the direct line to Melbourne and the line to North Geelong diverged. Noted rail historian Chris Banger has written another of his superbly-researched articles on the history of this station and the trains that serviced it. The article is superbly illustrated with steam-era photos that, in many cases, we believe have never before been published.

Our tourist and heritage rail column has a brilliant photo essay of the restoration project at Mornington Railway to return classic guards van 457ZL to service. Ben Swaine takes us through a project that began as a simple ‘spruce up’ but quickly became very much more involved when work to prep the exterior revealed deeper problems with this century-old van.

Our news section includes details of life-extension upgrades to the XPT fleet as well as news of the arrival of the first of their replacements from manufacturer CAF of Spain, which are now at the new train maintenance facility at Dubbo. These trains will eventually operate into Melbourne.

Our other regular sections are there:

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