Railway_Digest__February_2018

Fine dining on Bellarine Railway’s Q Train
– and a Japanese comparison
Text and images by James Chuang
In the golden era of long distance train travel partaking of a
meal in a dining car was an enjoyable and novel experience.
Unfortunately, as aircraft and motor cars took most of the
patronage away from long distance trains, especially in North
America and Australasia, the traditional dining car almost disappeared,
along with the trains that it served. In addition, the high cost of
providing a full dining service complete with starched tablecloths and
the best of crockery and cutlery, meant that the dining car was often
not a viable financial operation, and would need to be subsidised by
other parts of a railway’s operations. Today, many railway operators
provide a low-cost walk-up counter or buffet service or a trolley service
to passengers at their seats instead of a full dining car. Highspeed rail
mostly serve airline-style precooked meals.
In order to experience full dining car service in Australia today,
one would need to travel on a tourist-orientated train like the Indian
Pacific or the Spirit of the Outback, which aim at the higher end of the
market. Melbourne’s long-running Colonial Tramcar Restaurant also
continues the tradition of fine dining on rails, albeit in an urban setting.
However, some tourist and heritage railways have moved beyond their
original focus of providing a ride on heritage rolling stock to the dining
experience area with, for example, Victoria’s Puffing Billy Railway
provides trips focused on dining, while Ipswich-based Queensland
Pioneer Steam Railway is now offering travel with a dining theme (see
October 2017 RD, page 52)
The Bellarine Railway, near Geelong, has recently entered the dining
experience world with its Q Train, promoting food and drinks as the
main theme. However, although the Q Train is promoted as a dining
experience, rail enthusiasts will find the former Queensland Rail (QR)
M series ‘Lander’ cars and the spluttering sound of a QR English Electric
diesel locomotive add much interest.
Background
The South Geelong to Queenscliff railway, serving the Bellarine Peninsula
and fortifications at the entrance to Port Phillip Bay at Queenscliff,
opened in 1879 as a broad-gauge line and closed in 1976. The section
between Queenscliff and Drysdale reopened as a tourist and heritage
railway in 1979, by regauging the railway to 1067mm (3ft 6in), enabling
locomotives from the former Australian Portland Cement works at
Fyansford, near Geelong, to operate the tourist trains. Over the years the
railway collected 1067mm gauge rolling stock from both government
and private railways across Australia.
Fast-forward to the present time and the Bellarine Railway is seeking
to build upon its popularity by developing another feature to encourage
passengers come for a ride. To date the Bellarine Railway has developed
‘Day out with Thomas’ events (based on the Thomas the tank engine
concept), ‘Driving experience’ for both steam and diesel locomotives,
‘Cab ride’, ‘Halloween train’, ‘Santa train’ and the now well-known
‘Blues Train’.
When Queensland Rail put most of their M series steel-bodied
air-conditioned cars up for sale, the Bellarine Railway teamed up with
Total Quality Solutions Pty Ltd to purchase 24 M series Comeng and
Ipswich Workshops-built carriages, thereby becoming by far the largest
current M series car owner! The purchase of M series cars was intended
to create a dining train with a focus on a casual fine dining experience
with a six-course degustation menu, plus wines. The train is intended to
showcase the food and wine from the Geelong region.
A new brand name was created, ‘The Q train’, with the ‘Q’, based
on Queenscliff and former M series car owners, Queensland Rail. The
tourist railway already owns ex-QR English Electric locomotive 1604
to operate the train and reinforce the Queensland theme, and there
may be the possibility of steam haulage on occasions. A new colour
46 RAILWAY DIGEST