By Mikayla van Loon
The Mooroolbark Miniature Railway held its first public open day in two years last weekend bringing hundreds of people out to enjoy the circuit.
Although restricting the number of attendees to 300 per group and making it a free ticketed event across two sessions, club president Paul Hopwood said it was nice to see people out and riding again.
“It’s nice to see the public having fun and enjoying [themselves]. There was a lot of up and down. Roughly, Sunday (27 March) was the first run in two full years of nothing,” he said.
While the shutdown period meant the public weren’t able to experience the downscaled trains, Mr Hopwood said it gave members a chance to repair and relay track.
“You see a track on the top of the ground. We know what’s under the ground and the history that’s under the ground because the club’s been here for over 40 years,” he said.
“So there’s all sorts of incarnations from 40 years ago, 30 years ago, from 20 years ago and in bits of concrete. So you get to a point where there’s one, two, three generations of concrete that all come together and now we’ve put another generation over the top.”
Mr Hopwood said while some parts of the 840 metre track still run smoothly, works to replace 300 metres of mainline track were able to be undertaken during the Covid-19 period.
“It kept the public out and allowed us to do the job as a job would normally be done. You start at the beginning and just keep progressing through until you get to the end.
“We haven’t quite got to the end, this is all part of finishing off, so we’re not doing too badly.”
The upgrades meant Sunday’s opening day had less derailments and issues on the track because curves, dips and unsteady ground was fixed.
Once the track has been repaired, Mr Hopwood said the next task will be to improve and upgrade the signalling systems but it’s a long way away.
Getting back to a normal schedule of operating 11 months of the year on every fourth Sunday of the month is on the cards, although the limitations on numbers will remain.
With a drop in memberships, Mr Hopwood said groups of 300 patrons is as much as the members can handle for the next little while.
“The side effect of Covid and I’ve noticed this for all sorts of activity groups, memberships have dropped off and that has been the case here.
“We’ve only got 46 or 47 members as opposed to 55. So it makes it harder to actually run, especially when you’ve got to do seat cleaning and you’ve got to put a Covid marshal at the gate and all this.
“So there’s additional jobs that we never had to deal with in days gone by with a reduced number.”
Hoping to adjust as needed over the year to allow as many people to enjoy the railway, Mr Hopwood said more members would help get back to pre-Covid levels.
With mentoring on offer and no prior skills needed, the Mooroolbark Miniature Railway would be happy to welcome anyone with an interest in learning locomotives.
“We would like more members. There’s plenty of varied activities. The engineering subjects are catered for.”
