Chasing the Picnic Train
Chasing the return trip of the Maitland Picnic Train from Hawkesbury River to Mt. Kuring-gai via the B83
On the 15th, the Picnic Train ran a return service from Concord West to Maitland for the annual Maitland Show, hauled by their bright-red diesel locomotive, 4903 pictured in the feature image.
The return train was scheduled to pass Hawkesbury River about a quarter past 6pm, which is where we began our "chase" of this train.
After getting some shots of the train as it passed Hawkesbury River (along with a nice whistle from the driver), we ran back to the car to try and beat the train to our next intended location, a small bridge along the B83 that runs parallel to the tracks, crossing over the M1 ramp just north of Berowra. We narrowly got ahead of the train passing Cowan, and reached the bridge whilst the train waited for a Mariyung service heading in the same direction to pass. This allowed us to snap the feature photo which can be seen at the top of this post and also get the photo below as we prepared to leave.
Our last destination that we wanted to get a photo at was Mt. Kuring-gai Station due to the nice curve in the tracks just beyond the platform. We also successfully beat the train here by a couple minutes, after which we concluded the chase.
Closing Thoughts
This was my first time chasing a train, after a suggestion from a friend (who also kindly offered to do the driving). Overall, it was a lot of fun, but its quite dependent on the location; something like this was only really possible because the B83 follows the line closely and the line speed was not too different from the speed limit for cars. Additionally, the B83 is fairly empty of other motorists too (at least compared to the M1), which meant we wouldn't be causing too much of a nuisance to the general public either.
Perhaps something similar could be done along the South Coast line, or further afield from Sydney (chasing regional or frieghts) although I have not looked into it.
