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25.01.2022 Day two of what is rumoured to be a big week for trains in Rainbow - Southern Shorthaul Railroad sent locomotives by GM22-CLP12-BRM001 with 39 hoppers to Rainbow on Tuesday 22 September, seen here 16.30 in the afternoon as the last few hoppers were loaded. This was the first visit of a member of both the CLP and BRM classes to this branch line, which runs north from Dimboola, through Jeparit to Rainbow. The section beyond this location to Yaapeet is currently booked out of service. The first train to visit this week was a Pacific National train hauled by 8163 and G520 on the previous day.

20.01.2022 #OnThisDay - On October 11 2014, for the first (and by our records possibly the only time), GWA loaded a grain train at the Wimmera Intermodal Freight Terminal (WIFT) at Dooen, between Horsham and Murtoa. The original plans for this facility included over-rail loading bins for grain, but as they have not yet been built, the loading of the train on this day occurred using a road-transportable elevator. A fleet of trucks conveyed the grain to the WIFT from the Viterra storage ...site located two kilometres to the west. The train featured six locomotives, 2214-701-ALF20-GM42-ALF22-2212, a crew car and around forty hoppers. These photos show the motive power lashup as it departed Dooen and a heavily zoomed shot of the loading arrangement.

19.01.2022 #OnThisDay - In October 2008 Steamrail’s S313 and T357 were engaged in ballasting duties in the Donald area on the Mildura line. S313 was painted in a modified American Louisville & Nashville livery after appearing in the mini-series ‘The Pacific’ set during the Second World War. Since the filming, the L & N wording had been replaced with ‘Steamrail Victoria’ and the Steamrail logo. This photo was taken on 8 October 2008 just south of Donald at 10.15 with S313 leading the train dropping ballast in the down direction. Upon arrival at this location, T357 was run around to the south end of the consist, before the train continued north in push-pull arrangement to drop more ballast between Donald and Litchfield.

17.01.2022 SCT’s up Dooen goods, 9722, departing the Wimmera Intermodal Freight Terminal at 13.44 on the afternoon of Tuesday 10 November 2020. This was the first occasion that these two locomotives had teamed up on this service being hired by SCT to cover the usual surge in traffic in the lead up to Christmas. C501 is on Hire from Seymour Railway Heritage Centre, and CLF2 on its first revenue run since reactivation by its current owner, RailPower. These locomotives had travelled to Dooen light engine on the previous Saturday where they stabled before taking up this duty today.

16.01.2022 #OnThisDay - One of our favourite ‘catches’ occurred twenty years ago on this day when whilst delivering to the GrainCorp facility in Jeparit at around 14 00, our photographer observed a short down grain rattling through town, hauled by Freight Australia coloured X45 and Great Northern Rail Services’ T381. The T class was on spot hire to Freight Australia, and it was the first locomotive from this company to run on this line. The train travelled to the terminus at Yaapeet, ar...riving at 15 20 where the rake of seven empty hoppers was placed in the silo road, and eight loaded hoppers were collected before departure at 16 00. This picture (scanned from a print) was taken on the return journey when the train paused at Rainbow to collect fourteen more loaded hoppers before continuing Dimboola.

15.01.2022 By the early 2000s scheduled branch line trains were rare in Victoria, with grain dominating the freight task on an ‘as required’ basis. One of these regularly transported gypsum from Cowangie, on the branch west of Ouyen, to Waurn Ponds near Geelong, but due to the remote loading location and timetable, was difficult to photograph. On this day (4 August) in 2004, our photographer was in Ouyen and after noting locomotives H4 and X40 stabled in the yard, was preparing to head... for home at 16 14 when the sound of an approaching train was heard. This photo was hurriedly taken, and as a result, was not very well composed, but it does record G525 lead a clean rake of 10 gypsum hoppers and 17 grain hoppers off the branch. Upon arrival, this train was combined with the locos and grain hoppers that were in the yard, in preparation for the trip south which would depart later in the day.

14.01.2022 #FromTheArchives - Contrasting with the subdued colours usually found at Diapur Loop (between Nhill and Kaniva on the western standard gauge line), El Zorro’s S302 is stabled with a rake of AHBY ballast hoppers, and GM36 on the afternoon of 21 August 2009. At this time El Zorro had the hook-and-pull contract with ARTC to distribute ballast along this line. Eleven years later, S302 is with Southern Shorthaul Railroad and is still regularly seen on their broad gauge domestic grain services, and GM36 is presently in storage at Seymour.

13.01.2022 The S-bend to the east of Kiata, between Dimboola and Nhill.

13.01.2022 #OnThisDay - Back when the 81 class was a novelty on the branch north of Dimboola, 8171 led a Pacific National grain train of 24 hoppers to Rainbow on Friday 23 June 2006. This photo was captured at 16.20 on that day as the returning loaded train approached the location of Ellam, north of Jeparit. The grain silos at Pullut, the next siding to the north, can be seen in the distance.

10.01.2022 Southern Shorthaul Railroad’s down empty grain service to Jeparit on the morning of Thursday 24 September 2020, photographed approaching Tarranyurk at 10 35. This train was hauled by G514 and 48s34 and consisted of 39 assorted grain hoppers destined for loading at Jeparit, one of only two remaining loading locations, along with Rainbow, on the branch line north of Dimboola.

09.01.2022 G523 and BL32 with 40 grain hoppers down through Jeparit at 8.42 this morning (Tues.30.6.2020), destined for loading at Rainbow - photographed climbing Ellam Bank with the Graincorp silos at Jeparit in the background.

09.01.2022 Do you even need an excuse to post a picture of double-headed C class locomotives? #OnThisDay - September 10 2018, what was referred to as the ‘Monster Grain Train’ was operated by Southern Shorthaul Railroad from New South Wales to load at the Dimboola Grainflow Centre. The train was made up of locomotives C505-C507-C506-C510-RL306 hauling a total of 100 hoppers.... It was split into two for loading with C505, C507 and RL306 and the 59 BGKF red former coal hoppers loaded first, and the other two locomotives, C506 and C510, were used to load the 41 BGTY silver hoppers. Pictured here are former Victorian Railways C class locomotives, C506 and C510 posing with the silver hoppers in Dimboola Loop.

08.01.2022 #OnThisDay - The first visit of the former New South Wales Government Railways grain hoppers to the Yaapeet (now Rainbow) branch occurred on this day, October 2, in 2008, but did not go as planned. Pacific National’s XR559 and XR555 took a rake of 20 assorted NGPF and NGKF grain hoppers to Jeparit, and despite arriving at around 10.30, the locomotives departed light engine at 15.15, with none of the hoppers having been loaded. It appeared that the issue was that the loading c...hutes were too low, as these hoppers are taller than the VHGF and variants that had been exclusively used up until that time. The same locomotives returned the following day and assisted in loading the wagons utilising the now modified loading chutes. The train departed at 16.15 with 13 loaded hoppers, with the remaining seven empties left in the silo road for filling at a later time. This photo is of the train posing in the silo road at Jeparit on the first day of this odyssey whilst the issue with the loading chutes is investigated

08.01.2022 #OnThisDay - This photograph shows the combination of G519-inline fuel tanker-G543-G523 on the front of a down empty grain train waiting to depart Dimboola on the morning of Friday, June 29, 2007. This was a rare working destined for Western Australia which returned with a load of grain in the middle of the following week which was unloaded at Marmalake at Murtoa.

07.01.2022 #FromTheArchives - Another rare photo of the Cowangie gypsum train in the 1990s from our collection. On Tuesday 11 November 1997, V/Line locomotive X37 hauled this train solo and was long end leading on the up journey. Our photographer caught it at 12.45 approaching the Mallee Highway level crossing just out of Ouyen with its consist of three VJHA hoppers loaded with gypsum, and eleven loaded grain hoppers. Upon arrival at Ouyen, more grain hoppers and a louvre van were added, along with extra locomotives S301 and G515, for the trip to Geelong that evening.

05.01.2022 #OnThisDay - July 22, 2008 - Double-headed XR class locomotives haul a short rake of empty grain hoppers around the last curve approaching Yaapeet when the branch line north of Dimboola was still open to its furthermost terminus. Even before construction commenced on this line in the early 1890s it was touted as a significant link in the mainline to Mildura which was anticipated to divert the lucrative Murray River trade to the Victorian seaports of Portland, Port Fairy, and... Warrnambool. It took until 1914 for the line to make it the 88 kilometres to ‘Turkey Bottom’, the original name of the what is now known as Yaapeet, and by this time Mildura had been linked by rail for just over a decade via a line further east through Donald and Birchip. The line never progressed any further and is now only open to a grain loading site just north of Rainbow. See more

04.01.2022 #FromTheArchives - Once the railway between Melbourne and Adelaide was standardised in 1995, it allowed locomotives previously unseen in western Victoria to visit. On 3 July 2002 when former New South Wales Government Railways locomotive 4468, at the time being operated by Great Northern Rail Servies, was in Horsham, it required some work on its front bogie.

04.01.2022 #OnThisDay - Mining company Iluka transported Mineral sands by rail from Hopetoun, at the end of the branch from Murtoa, to their processing plant just south of Hamilton from November 2011 to November 2017. Initially, El Zorro had the contract to haul these trains which resulted in the utilization of a wide variety of motive power. On this day (18 July) in 2012 locomotive S302, then owned by EL Zorro, and 1872, still in Patricks colours, were hauling a rake of 18 hoppers approaching Lah, north of Warracknabeal, when photographed en route to Hamilton.

03.01.2022 The first grain train operated by Southern Shorthaul Railroad on the Rainbow branch since it was reopened earlier this year travelled to the terminus late in the evening of Monday 6 July 2020. Its twenty-two hoppers were loaded on the next day, before it returned to Dimboola late in the afternoon and was photographed in fading light approaching Jeparit at 16.45, with locomotives 4917-602-4908 upfront. This train formed part of a larger consist that arrived at Dimboola on Mond...ay afternoon, with two RL class locomotives and another twenty hoppers that were loaded at Lillimur on the mainline. These two smaller trains were combined at Dimboola and commenced the return journey to New South Wales, via Melbourne, on Tuesday evening. This was the first reported instance of a member both the 49 and 600 classes visiting the Rainbow line.

02.01.2022 Pacific National’s 8163 and G520 leading an up grain train through Tarranyurk (10 km south of Jeparit on the Dimboola-Rainbow branch) at 19 57 on the evening of Monday 21 September 2020. This train had travelled north through this location at 05 45 this morning and spent the day loading at Rainbow.