Welcome!

Welcome to the Rail Tourist Association's website!

NEW: Archives Update (September 2019)

One of the long-term goals of this website is to provide a record of many of the RTA tour reports and other documents over the years. The RTA was ahead of most groups in that much of this material was typed electronically as far back as the 1980s, in the days of non-IBM compatible computers (WordStar on a Microbee) and well before the wide adoption of the Internet (using manual dial-up modem transfers!). As such, a great deal of RTA material still exists in electronic form.

Various methods have been used to import these files (preserving most of the original formatting) to bring them back to life in the 21st century. Hard copies have been OCR scanned to PDF files, preserving the original appearance but with searchable and copyable text, allowing the opportunity to correct spelling mistakes and enable more accurate searching. Older electronic originals have been converted to more modern file formats for conversion to PDF, while preserving most of the original layout.

The job is complete! All 178 editions, categorised by year, are available for download as at mid September 2019. They may be found in the 'Archives' section.

Next Tour

Our next tour will take the form of an inspection of the Seymour Railway Heritage Centre in conjunction with our Annual General Meeting. This will take place on Sunday, 22 September 2019. Booking form may be downloaded here.

The VR Tours Database

A new tab has been added to the Main Menu which links to the VR Tours Wiki. Please read the introductory page before entering the database - comments and suggestions welcome!

Archives

Recently, some printed material came to light in relation to the RTA's epic 17-day tour over all the lines in the Eyre Peninsula in February-March 1986.

BHP were extremely helpful at the time, and even resurrected an old brakevan (previously in use as an old paint shop) for our group to use on a special train over the Iron Knob and Iron Baron lines. Our flickr page www.flickr.com/photos/railtourist has photos of this brakevan in use (and another from 2015) as well as the train order for the special working on 16 Feb. 1986.

The most interesting item was a folder of notes provided by BHP detailing the history of the line and details of their rolling stock. This was probably passed around on the day amongst the tour participants.

This rare document has been digitised, with a text layer which is selectable and fully searchable. This has been made available to all, along with the six-page tour report, under the Archives tab of this website.

Items of interest to new visitors:

• Click on 'Archives' to find various RTA-related documents. A complete set of Members' Newsletters dating from 1977 may be viewed and downloaded; more items will be progressively added as time permits.
  Also included is a collection of early RTA rail tickets from the 1970s and the early 1980s.
  Tour notes for the Allendale tour in 1980 are also included, scanned and converted to text in a layered PDF.

• Click on 'Photos' to go the RTA's Flickr page which contains over 200 photos of past tours. Well over half of the RTA's tours are now represented. The page has scored over 200,000 hits as at February 2017!

• 'Links' includes Weston Langford Railway Photography and the RTA President's photo page, as well as the slide collection of the late Geoff Gargeeg.

• Under 'Past Tours': A downloadable list of tours from 1977 to the present (updated September 2019)