It was 44 years last week since the 1969 crash of the Southern Aurora into a goods train at Violet Town in northeast Victoria. (Upgrades to safety systems should ensure such a crash doesn’t happen again.)
The CFA has published a set of photos and a fascinating article about the disaster — well worth a read.
As it happens I went through Violet Town just after Christmas, with time to spare, and snapped a few pictures.
The station, about a kilometre north of the accident site, is a very peaceful spot.
I assume as the result of remodelling works, this odd crossing within the station grounds has been half fenced-off, but is open from one side.
On the citybound platform are recognisable Myki reader mounting points and one of the big Myki/Kamco equipment boxes — with the change to the Myki rollout plan in 2011, this and other stations beyond the V/Line commuter belt might never get Myki. (I wonder if anything is inside the box?) A newer Albury-bound platform didn’t seem to have the mounting points.
The modern-day daytime equivalent of the train that crashed, a southbound Countrylink XPT zoomed through… notice how much it bounces around — perhaps a result of continuing problems with the track upgrade on the line.
6 replies on “Pictures from Violet Town”
The town looks very peaceful – your photos captured the mood well.
Earlier this year, I wanted to catch the train from Albury to Melbourne so I could start work in my city job by 9am. Alas, none of the trains (according to Vline website) allowed this. So I took Greyhound bus which took 3.5 hours and arrived at 7:45. I guess country trains run for pensioners not workers.
A nice coincidence that the Violet Town station sign is in… violet.
@Roger, if you want to be an early riser there is the XPT departing Albury at 4:12 (yawn! Early rise!), arriving Southern Cross 7:35. V/Line tickets are accepted: http://www.vline.com.au/fares-and-tickets/tickets/otheroperators.html
I think most lines have trains that arrive in Melbourne by 9. From that distance there probably aren’t a lot of commuters, but there are certainly a lot of regional people going to things like medical appointments.
Thanks very much fior this article, Daniel. Harold Dixon, our next-door neighbour when I was growing up, had been the chef on the Southern Aurora’s dining car. He rescued and comforted many of the injured after the collision and was featured in an Australasian Post spread. An ex WWII paratrooper and a wonderful neighbour, Harold was a good person to be Johnny-On-The-Spot. I’ll see if there’s anything more precise I can add.
And here is some further info, courtesy of Allan Cumming, whose father was prominent in the Violet Town CFA in 1969:
http://www.cfaconnect.net.au/news/southern-aurora-crash-remembered.html
https://www.cfaconnect.net.au/index.php?option=com_joomgallery&func=viewcategory&catid=1396&Itemid=11
@Lad Litter, thanks, but these are the two articles I linked to in the original blog post! (Well, I linked to the parent page which goes to both of these.)
Still, a good read!
PS. In my comment above I mentioned V/Line fares being accepted on XPT services. Someone advised me that this is no longer the case; I guess you’d have to book with Countrylink directly.