dev|ant wrote:Looks good. What's "The Short North"?
The lines from Sydney to the various places in Australia are known as the following:
"Short North" - Sydney to Newcastle. Electrified, double track.
"Main North" - Newcastle to Werris Creek (north west NSW). This used to be the standard gauge route to the border of New South Wales and Queensland, although "The North Coast Line" replaced this, and the line slowly gets worse and worse. Non electrified, mostly single track after Maitland.
"The North Coast Line" - Newcastle to Brisbane (captial of Queensland). Freight is mostly intermodal, although some sugar, cement, steel etc. Freight and passengers must change to narrow gauge railways to get around QLD.
"Blue Mountains Line" - Double track electric line to the west between Sydney and Lithgow. Crosses the Great Dividing Range. Considered to be some of the steepest and longest grades in the country.
"Main West Line" - Single track, line from Lithgow to Broken Hill, then on to Adelaide. Rather dodgy alignment.
"Main South Line" - Sydney to Melbourne, via Goulburn, Cootamundra, Junee and Albury (all railway towns originally). Busiest railway line in the state, conveying lots and lots of freight.
"Illawarra Line" - Sydney to Wollongong and Kiama via the southern coast. Again, very steep grades. Used by export coal trains from Lithgow going to Port Kembla.
All of those locations you could look up on Wikipedia, although a rudimentry map of New South Wales will show you most of those places. These lines are the main lines that radiate out from Sydney - there are a few lines that go between these, but they are far away from Sydney and mostly don't matter to someone limited to public transport.
And what I've always wanted to know is, how do you pass time between trains?!
It really depends on your location. Places with level crossings are awesome, as you can read a book or do something without looking at the line, as you just have to stir when a train comes along. Also good are places with controlled signals, especially near busy junctions, as the a good signaller will only clear the line when a train is on the approach (so, a train passes a green, and the next signal is displaying "advanced caution", which is cleared before the train gets there, so that the signals clear just ahead of the train. That way if there is a problem, the driver will slow down gradually rather than suddenly have a stick change from green to red in front of him).
Most of the time, I just enjoy the environment. It sounds really, REALLY boring, but I literally just sit there, camera in lap and daydream. Watch the birds, listen to the sounds of the trees, watch the clouds pass overhead. It's a very relaxing hobby. You spend two hours on a train getting to your photospot, sit around for five or six hours, moving for five minute periods when you take photos and jot down the sighting in your notes, and then resume sitting around getting a tan.
You could always take photos of infrastructure and stuff too, or abstract photos, photos of birds, etc etc.
Here in NSW, there are a couple of good spots where there is lots of action, which are good places to start. The metro goods line in Sydney, gets trains every 20-30 minutes, plus four passenger trains an hour. The Hunter Valley can see export coal trains going past every 10 minutes in each direction, on a good day.
Although, the best thing to do? Go with someone. I always try and get at least two other people along with my on my trips, unless it's a quick afternoon one for two hours or so. Generally I'll try to call people with cars (as they can get to me in reasonable time, rather than adding an extra two hours onto an expected travel time of an hour and a half... so they'd be going three and a half hours each way...), or people who live on the line I'm heading along. Example, if I'm going on the Main South, I'll call mates who live down that way anyway, so they can catch up when it suits.
Sorry for the long post, hope it helps. If in doubt, keep an eye on my sightings posts to see roughly how much time I have to kill between "interesting" trains.
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