Don River Railway.

 

Today we were on the move again but we did have one activity planned before leaving Devenport for Sisters Beach.

Devenport is home to the Don River Railway. The historic railway is stacked with a wide range of locomotives & rolling stock from the steam age, through to more more recent times of the deisel age.

Harry's favourite was the Y-Class loco (above). He was most put out that it wouldn't be pulling our train today.

The Railway has a sizable workshop where the visitors can observe the volenteers repairing & resorting the trains.

Steam train journey.

The Don River Railway isn't just a static display. Most of the locos & rolling stock are still active, albeit as a tourist train. We were fortunate enough (depending on perspective) to be there on the one day a month that they were running the M-Class Steam Locomotive with the tourist train. Harry isn't a fan of "Stinky steamies" and wanted the Y-Class to be doing a proper job of it.

Mum was much more excited having caught a steam train to school back in the day.

All Aboard!

Before we knew it, we were off on the 30 minute journey alongside the river toward the coast. The original railway once ran all the way to Burnie, but the first few kilometres from the museum are all that remains in use today.

 

The M-Class is no little dinky toy. It is a prober heavy duty stream locomotive. Although the time for the technology for these old relics has long passed, it is difficult to look past the engineering & mechanics of these amazing pieces of machinery.

The loco pulled the train in reverse on the outbound leg & had to decouple and swicth ends at the terminus. It gave us a chance to hop out of the train & watch it in motion at close range.

We were delivered back to the museum safely. With another activity box ticked, we were on our way to Sisters Beach on the Bass Straight coast.

Devenport Ferries

Our caravan park in East Devenport was located right at the rivermouth where the Spirit of Tasmania departs for Melbourne. With departure information at hand, we set off to the river hoping to see the famous ferry make it's way out into Bass Straight. Our first impressions of the ferry were a bit underwhelming (above). We quickly we realised that this was in fact the Spirit of Devenport, a small cross river ferry.

The huge Spirit of Tasmania cruised past us right on time. Mersey River is fairly narrow, so the size of the huge ferry is quite daunting when you are so close.

Before we knew it, the Spirit was out of the river and into Bass Straight for the overnight voyage to Melbourne.