Dean Harvey Steam Ranger

Today we traveled to the town of my birth, Mt. Barker, about 20 miles south of Adelaide. We were visiting a highly credentialed garden which was part of the Open Garden scheme - with the express plan to shoot my blip of the day.

The garden was magnificent and it even turned out to be owned by an old school girlfriend I had not seen for over 50 years! What an amazing coincidence.

It was a gorgeous spring day, and on the way home we decided to pass the old Mt. Barker railway station which is only used these days for weekend steam ranger tours. I decided to stop to photograph some of their old rolling stock. Within 5 minutes, we heard the steam ranger train coming up the track, on it's return journey for the day. What a wonderful stroke of luck.

I rushed up to the platform to get a better view of its arrival at the station and snapped away. The train then reversed towards its shed ready for the night. This gave me a chance to get a few more photos at my preferred angle, which was laying on my back. A passenger said to me very nicely "all in the name of art?" Paladian and I did a day tour on this famous old steam train about 8 years go.

So much for the garden blip for the day, as this one trumps it for sure. See this classic old engine DEAN HARVEY in Large.
To read a little more about this engine , click here.

10 years ago this steam ranger used to go past our house every Sunday in spring and autumn. However it was stopped from passing through our area when the state government changed the rail gauge to conform with the national system - (Standard gauge-1,435 mm (4 ft 8 1?2 in). The train being broad gauge (Irish gauge)-1,600 mm (5 ft 3 in) is now based out of Mt. Barker.