Local railway enthusiasts will be spoilt over the next few months, with two special passenger trains over the next few months to visit the Wimmera.

The first will be the Grand Southern Loop tour operated by Railway Adventures in conjunction with Cruise Express, which will see patrons travel a circuit linking Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and back to the New South Wales capital on a seventeen-day odyssey.

A majority of the Victorian leg of this journey will be operated by the Seymour Railway Heritage Centre, utilizing their Spirit of Progress heritage passenger train.

The train collected the tour passengers from Albury on Tuesday morning, from where they will be transported to Melbourne for the night.

Yesterday, their journey continued westward to Horsham, where they stayed last night.

Today, Thursday, 22 August, will see the patrons travel to Murtoa for a visit to the Stick Shed in the morning before they rejoin the train for a trip to the terminus of the Hopetoun branch, with stops to view the silo art at Sheep Hills and Brim along the way.

This evening, they will again overnight at Horsham before boarding The Overland train to Adelaide the next day to continue their trek, which will ultimately take them back to Sydney.

For the journey to the Wimmera the special passenger train is planned to be made up of locomotives X31 and C501, hauling a consist of seven passenger coaches.

While this tour is exclusive for those taking in the whole seventeen-day tour, locals will have the opportunity to travel along both Wimmera branch lines in October when a similar train will visit for a weekend in conjunction with Murtoa’s Big Weekend and travel as far as Beulah on the Hopetoun line, and to the terminus of the Dimboola to Rainbow line.
For those who know their locomotives, the plan is for C501 and X31 to haul this train.

C501 hauled last year’s Wimmera Weekender along with S307, and is pictured above during a stop to view the Silo Art at Sheep Hills.

Although this will be the first time that X31 has hauled a passenger on the standard gauge, both C501 and X31 visited the Wimmera together earlier this year on hire to SCT operating freight trains to the Wimmera Intermodal Freight Centre at Dooen, and are pictured below approaching Murtoa on 16 February this year.