Love keeps a charming tourist attraction keeps chugging along on the Bellarine Peninsula. Highton’s SARAH LITTLETON meets the volunteers ensuring the historic Bellarine Railway remains on track.
The huge machine surges towards the group.
It stops.
The young boy’s eyes widen in surprise – is it really him?
“I think I thought it was the real Thomas the Tank Engine,” says 20-year-old Darcy Peterson as he looks back fondly on his childhood visits to Victoria’s Drysdale Railway Station.
Now a volunteer member of Bellarine Railway Society, Darcy is thrilled to be part of activities ranging from the crewing of trains to the management of events for the railway’s estimated 120,000 annual visitors.
“It’s a rare opportunity. I came in at exactly the right time,” he says.
The society regularly runs historic steam and diesel trains – as well as Thomas the Tank Engine lookalikes – along its narrow-gauge line between Drysdale and Queenscliff.
The intermittent services provide a unique tourism experience on the Bellarine Peninsula, with locals also patronising rollicking Blues Train band nights or booking trains for functions ranging from birthday parties to weddings.
With limited government support, the not-for-profit railway depends on the work of its volunteers.
Unlike Darcy, railway marketing and administration coordinator Kate Kenny admits to limited passion for trains when she joined the society 16 years ago.
“My husband was a train guard at the station and his kids loved it,” Kate says.
“I thought I could either sit at home or go and see what all the fuss was about.”
More in the latest Geelong Coast Magazine.
