#31. Ride the Tilt Train – Tick!

Anything is Possible…in your own Way!

#31. Ride the Tilt Train – Tick!

October 21, 2013

Last Tuesday 15th October, I excitedly boarded the Bundaberg Tilt Train (a more ‘luxury’ type train) – Business Class, not knowing what lay in front of me – feeling like a child at Christmas I wandered to my seat, looking around and exploring with my eyes, not knowing what surprises lay in store, in the next two hours for my trip. With my only experience of trains being the City/suburban trains, I was in for a very pleasant surprise!

Complimentary cuppa/juice and morning paper,
snacks available for purchase off the menu *I had only had breakfast about an hour before, but I just HAD to order something! haha*,
reclining seats and footrest, (the seats were SO comfortable with loads of legroom),
curtains on the windows,
headphones with access to music (and sound for the movies on the internal tv screens – but they weren’t playing one at the time of my trip),
hostess coming to my seat to cater for my every need

…SO relaxing! No it wasn’t a longhaul trip, only two hours to Brisbane…but it was just like being on a commercial aircraft (but more legroom than Economy on a flight, and much more quiet and smooth than flying), it was awesome!

When I originally put this Dream on my List, my original thought/want, was to travel up to North Qld on the Tilt Train…mainly as I was completely unaware that there was a more local service/route available – I had no idea that it travelled shorter distances as well. As soon as I found out that there was a service from my own home town, to the city I visit fairly regularly (Brisbane, Qld) – that was it, the idea was planted into my mind, to do this shorter trip on the Tilt Train, as a way of experiencing it without having to plan, and save up for a longhaul trip for it – awesome! 😀

I suppose the only *disappointment*, if you can even call it that haha..is that here in Qld, we have narrower train tracks, so apparently the faster trains like these, are unable to go up to their full speed here, like other highspeed trains can travel up to, eg. in Europe. I was told that it could be capable of speeds in excess of 300km/hr, if the tracks could handle it. This train travels at around 160km/hr, which is relatively slow compared to what its really capable of! Anyone who knows me, knows that I love a bit of speed, so that is one of the first questions I asked at the station, while waiting for the train to arrive – “How fast are they capable of running?”