XPT retrospective - part III

I hadn't realised I had left my XPT retrospective untouched for two months.  I think I left things in Melbourne around 1994.  The next big thing in my on/off XPT relationship was the 1995 Tilt Train, captured here in March of that year in Goulburn.

The real star was at the other end of the platform.

The late 1990s was a time of comparative stasis - few innovations, just millions of XPT miles.  There was that time I arrived at Orange East Box 10 seconds too late to take a photo of a crew in a hurry to get to Sydney.

And I always thought that this accidental capture of XP2008 in 1998 highlighted its HST heritage nicely.

And then we all went rather colourful.  First the Olympics....

And then a color that should never adorn anything, unless it is a vegetable. Or in Bundanoon on a grey day in 2002.

By 2004 I was pretty much over rides on XPTs, nearly always late, overloaded and prone to mechanical failure.  Here is a 2004 snap of one such delay at Gloucester.

It was time for a change, so I was pretty happy on 26 April 2006 when the new livery of the XPT was unveiled at Central.

The next and final instalment will cover the XPT up to its present autumnal years.

Cheers,

Don