Keeping the best till last??? Spring Bluff; Part 4 Carnival of Flowers...

Spring Bluff railway station  is a well loved destination for a visit here in SE Queensland. The little station is known for its beautiful gardens and the whole precinct is now heritage listed. This is part of the historic Ipswich to Toowoomba railway line, the building of which started in 1864 and the first train came through on April 12, 1867. The station was decommissioned in 1992 but was put on the National trust register in 1994. It is on a line which, with the mining boom, has become very important for the transportation of coal. The only passenger trains these days are tours and special excursion trains.

Now for some more recent history affecting Spring Bluff station...last year in January, a huge wall of water washed away the side of the hill/bluff that the station is 'perched' on. The damage was huge as the photos from the Queensland Rail website show. The railway lines had the soil, stones and some sleepers washed out from underneath them...the beautiful gardens and the bitumen carpark were washed away...

The line was reopened in 2 months and the complex of gardens etc was reopened in August; quite an effort! It's hard to imagine the volume of water that came down this dry looking culvert in January 2011...

When DH and I arrived at Spring Bluff, we saw that there was an excursion train from Toowoomba at the station. These tourists had come up the range from Toowoomba and had had a picnic lunch at Spring Bluff. The train started loading for the return journey about 20 minutes after we arrived... and then we waved to those on the train as it pulled out of the station...I can't help myself...always wave at excursion trains :-)

Look how high that step up to the train door is!!

That's ok...QR has a set of steps...

And then when all the passengers are aboard, the steps are wheeled away :-)

The 'station master'...a volunteer

The old 'points' room

So now some photos of the station and its gardens...

The old station master's house

the terraces in front of the old caretaker's cottage

The cute caretaker's cottage

that old tree planted in 1870

terraced gardens beside the road into the car park...

DH ordered a Devonshire tea; this is half of his scone!




Just as we finished our cuppas (and DH ate his scone) we heard a train in the distance climbing up the range . It was a 'double-header' coal train, but it was empty we guessed as it was going pretty fast up the range. There were over 40 wagons behind the 2 engines. 

What a great finale to our Toowoomba visit.