Ladies and gentlemen, please allow me to take you on a journey on one of Australia’s most unique railways.

Not that you would know how unique it is by looking at the station building which gives off a very strong “council chambers of a small inland rural shire” vibe.

The interior of Bullocks Flat station doesn’t look quite so much like a rural shire’s council chambers. But still not terribly unique.

There’s a nice stained glass window. That’s reasonably unique. Not too many railway stations have stained glass windows.

And here’s a train! Despite its Soviet-esque looks with its chunky boxy shape and fluting along the sides, it doesn’t look THAT unique. It could be any Eastern European metro, really.

A train every 25 minutes? That’s more frequent than many suburban railway lines in Australia’s big cities.

The station staff at Bullocks Flat write daily riddles on a sandwich board placed just before the gare barrier. That’s cute, but is it what makes this particular railway unique?

Tickets are reloadable smart cards that you order online before you arrive and pick up from the ticket counter at the station, the cards even have your name printed on them. That’s fairly unique, I guess.

It’s time to board my train!

The interior of the train is WIDE. Like, really wide. And everything is hard metal. There are plenty of social distancing dots in the era of COVID.

But does that make this train unique?

Aha! What’s this? A third rail in the middle? And the third rail has TEETH? Unique!

Yes folks, this is the Skitube, mainland Australia’s only rack railway. (There’s a heritage rack railway in Tasmania.)

The 8.5km Skitube was opened in 1988 to relieve pressure on roads and parking at the Perisher complex of ski resorts in Kosciuszko National Park. It allows visitors to park below the snow line without tyre chains & catch a train the rest of the way. Here’s the start of the trip.

Apologies for the shocking video quality, all the windows are scratched to buggery.

The bottom few kilometres from Bullocks Flat are on the surface, the remainder are in a tunnel. There are two crossing loops, the first is just before the Bilston Tunnel portal.

Soon enough I was at Perisher station, the middle of 3 Skitube stations. (The Upper terminus is Blue Cow, which I didn’t visit yesterday; at 1905m above sea level Blue Cow is Australia’s highest railway station.)

You reach the Perisher resort by this footbridge from the station.

I passed my beginner’s lesson with flying colours. I didn’t fall over once in my lesson! (That came afterwards. Thankfully no injury except to my dignity.) Skiing is much more difficult than I expected though. And uncomfortable - walking in ski boots is tedious and dreary.

Perisher is beautiful. A couple of days in the Snowy Mountains is just what I needed. I am like one of those weird bacteria that thrives only in the cold.

(I shouldn’t use a snowman emoji, they are banned right now due to COVID. As are toboggans and snowball fights.)

I got sick of trying to ski after a while, my shins hurt like hell & moving around, especially trying to climb up slopes, was tiring. I didn’t quite get the hang of walking up slopes sideways. I’d walk 3m up & then slide 3m back down. Soul-crushing. It was time to go home.

Here’s the weirdest thing about Skitube: there are only 3 stations (Bullocks Flat, Perisher, Blue Cow). But to get from Bullocks Flat to Blue Cow, you have to change trains at Perisher. There’s probably a good reason for this. I just can’t think what it could possibly be.

It would be like the U55 U-Bahn line in Berlin requiring passengers to change at Bundestag to get from Brandenburger Tor to Berlin Hauptbahnhof. It makes no sense!

Anyway, here’s a train from Blue Cow arriving at Perisher. The platform for trains from Bullocks Flat is in the foreground; it faces both platforms to allow passengers to transfer to/from Blue Cow trains.

Skitube uses the same electrification system as the main New South Wales railway network, 1500V DC OHL

Station signage on the Skitube is somewhat reminiscent of the London Underground “roundel”

Here’s the train from Bullocks Flat arriving at Perisher where it will change direction to go back down.

Pulling into Bullocks Flat station I saw cars parked on the island platform. Unusual! Turns out it was a promo for Subaru.

The opening plaque is on the platform at Bullocks Flat incorporating a model of the rack and pinion system. On the back is a diagram of the railway and all sorts of technical details about Skitube.

I shall conclude this thread with some close-up photos of the diagram on the back of the opening plaque. Check out that 1980s typography!