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Our cover photo for the August edition of Newsrail, featuring S301 Sir Thomas Mitchell awaiting departure from Albury Station with the Albury Express in September 1939, heralds our feature content on the Albury Line.

Nick Anchen has compiled an interview he had with Arthur Eaton, who supervised the Seymour Locomotive Depot during the era of the legendary S Class Pacific locomotives. Arthur grew up in a house just metres from the railway line in Seymour, and a childhood fascination with the trains that thundered past the family home soon turned into a long and successful career. Arthur remembers the various qualities and quirks of the mighty three-cylinder Pacific locomotives that epitomised the VR at its peak.

Nick also presents an interview with Frank Allen, a railwayman whose long VR career began at age 15 working in the Spirit of Progress dining car. Frank describes a typical busy day that would start with helping to load the car with food at Spencer Street Station hours before its 6.30pm  departure and catching a brief few hours sleep after the train’s arrival at Albury before presenting at 6.00am to help prepare the car for its return journey back to Melbourne, and meeting such luminaries as VR Commissioner Harold Clapp.

During July, we received the terrible news that our long-time editorial team member Greg Michael had passed away. Greg had just completed a large three-part article on level crossing removals on the North East Line, from the 1890s through to the current day. In this edition, we present the first part of Greg’s final work for Newsrail.

Our News section includes details on the final ATSB report into the 2023 level crossing collision at Geelong of a truck and train at the Barwon Terrace level crossing in Geelong, as well as coverage of the recent Clifton Hill derailment.

And our usual other columns are there: