Wasn't aware Albury was a big Wool centre, but makes sense. All I remember is changing trains to standard gauge going north (2nd Class in Vic. trains was as good as 1st Class in NSW trains!)(such was the former prosperity of Vic!)(Albury station thus did brisk business in food sales.)

Would those wool centres go back to before the rail days when wool might have gone down the Murray River for shipping to Europe?

Very much so albeit the Governments & bureaucrats have not moved on from those days. The rail was run as stupidly as possible and one would still think everything was railed to the Murray and put on boats, like the canal system in England, which was superseded by rail over a century ago.

Stupidity is a train going Melbourne to Mildura & waiting ages, before having to go back: Most rail goes to the Murray & stops (both sides) there was a broad gauge line to Wagunyah & on the other side Corowa with British gauge. Corowa went back to Culcairn so it was about the distance Albury to Melbourne to get to Albury by rail, which if a rail was put along the Murray to Adelaide from Albury would take probably less than an hour. They built a new Bridge at Corowa & with the normal stupidity did not make it able to carry trains as well.

Now that we have actually standardised NSW & Vic rail: The rail could be so much more efficient with a Murray River line.

However, We have this idiotic bureaucratic psyche that says "If anything can be found that will not work, or will introduce chaos & inefficiency: This will be introduced ASAP".

Noted: Spate of people mainly in supermarkets with Antlers: Caution: This may be the result of GM food? NB. Reindeer Stags should not have Antlers this time of the year.

Keeping to the original topic; yes Wa2sie we have silly jumpers/sweaters (also cardigans) in Australia all year round but tee-shirts with equally silly slogans are more common at this time of year. That said I can recall two separate Christmas days in the state of Victoria (Ballarat and Omeo) when it snowed enough to cover windscreens on parked cars. Plus there was the day in 1966 at Moe where it was 40+ degrees at midday and then at 4:00PM after a massive thunderstorm it was down to to 5 degrees and the place was covered in hailstones the size of golf balls (and many car windows were cracked).

In response to Marcc's comments, the railway mess in Australia was and is solely the hard work of state and later federal politicians. It is easy to blame the poor public service (the bureaucrats) but it was the various polies and their mates with vested interests that determined where the tracks were laid. Given that the bulk of the lines were built prior to 1901 in the days when there were all the various colonial governments, the system was designed to run to the respective capital cities. Inter colony freight transport was not the priority and there were customs posts at the state borders and at the main ports on the Murray River to tax anything crossing from one colony to another.

In more recent times as a junior and then middle level bureaucrat I have seen the most stupid nonsense come out of the respective Minister's offices, usually dreamed up by his/her political advisors and all contrary to advice from the public servants. Once the Minister signs the instruction and/or a bill is passed in Parliament then that is what the bureaucrats have to do regardless of any logic and within the constraint of whatever budget is imposed. Plus there are usually a raft of regulations that have been imposed by parliamentary committees, inquiries, high court cases, audit reports, etc over the years that are contradictory or do not recognise changed circumstances. A simple example was that departments were required to pay all accounts in 30 days but the audit requirements for handling of public funds were such that it took at least 60 days and even then the payment process had to go through the Reserve Back which could add another 28 days. Result was that the companies knew that they would not get paid in less than 90 days and loaded their accounts by 30%. Another example was that all metal office furniture had to be painted battleship grey as that was the cheapest colour in 1931. By 1983 the departments were paying a premium to have cream furniture resprayed grey because that was the regulation colour and the auditors would give an adverse report if the department had anything that was outside the regulations. (Oddly I never saw any grey furniture in the Minister's office at the time.)

Another one:

The only major changes in rail, was pulling up all of the useful ones after the Menzies era, or letting them fall to bits: We have had over a century to sort it out. We have heat stress on our rural train lines, bringing them down to 19th century speeds yet America can run trains across the Mojave desert day & night at speeds we do not see & desert temps are extreme; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYIIpI3G_c4 The Amtrak (passenger was running late).

I thought they changed the public service colour to green and rang a bell every so often, & every one moved one station, and if it did not move it got painted green?

If the rails are made of steel with the same rate of expansion as the ground they are on they won't buckle. The problem with this is that this steel is much more expensive. I remember a BHP ad rolled out about 25 years ago which said they'd started exporting such rail (and metal sleepers) to Canada because of the wild temperature differences they experience in parts of that country.

Needless to say, it wasn't the same rail that was in government contract for the NSW Public Transport Commission.

WA2ISE, if you wore that second top in certain parts of Sydney, someone would take the advice on the front of it for sure.

Rail is the classis example of doing things "On the Cheap" It can be an expensive way of saving money. The Melbourne Albury Vic line was done on the cheap and in over a decade its still a money gobbling lemon.

Christmas: "The silly season". You really can see some weird & wacky interpretations.

That sweater could almost be classed as "Hi Viz"

desert temps are extreme; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYIIpI3G_c4

Why 3 locos pulling the modestly small Amtrak train?
I note the Milwaukee-Chicago Amtrak has one of those blue & grey (Siemens?) locos at front and rear (seems wasteful) (maybe their lazy way to reverse direction at each end?)

Up to 10 locomotives are sometimes seen on coal trains in NSW these days, or at least the very long ones. Four at the front, another four at the back and two in the middle to stop the train tipping and leaving the rails. Shorter ones more often seen in Sydney have either three or four at one end only. Rio Tinto's iron ore trains in the Pilbera region in WA are two or three times as long and autonomous and they have a similar set up to the longer trains in the east, but no driver. The locomotives out there are larger and feature air-conditioned engine rooms because of the heat out that way.

Re Pilbarra trains:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilbara_railways

On 21 June 2001, eight BHP Billiton GE AC6000CWs combined to set the world record for the longest and heaviest train; hauling a 682-car, 99,734 gross-tonne (82,000 tonnes of ore), 7.3 kilometre-long train.[5]

The longest coal train I saw on the Illawarra line had 43 cars and four locos, though usually they were 40 cars and 3 locos. There has been talk of upgrading the Illawarra line, but if it didn't happen in the coal boom, it is hard to see it ever happening.

It's a lot easier to have the longer trains out west, due to the rail lines being owned by the morning companies and no competing passenger services. In the east, the freight trains which can usually only get up to about 70 or 80km/h is that there is a V-set behind it that is scheduled to move at 100km/h.

The Inland Rail that is being built at the moment will take some of the congestion away from passenger services.

Noticed years ago coal trains waiting on sidings at Thirroul for passenger traffic to pass. There are probably other spots they could wait with adequate siding length. Available siding length would limit train length. There may be a limit to length that the Port Kembla coal loader can receive.

Used to see up to 15 ships waiting to get into Port Kembla harbour. Now it is never more than 4 or 5 and one of those will be a car carrier as Sydney's imported cars now come through there.

There's a long history of coal mining down that way. About five or six years ago I was able to go on a hike in the disused rail tunnels near Helensburgh. We went into two of them but I know there are others that are still on railway property. The first one was the original Helensburgh tunnel which was open at both ends and one end features the original Helensburgh railway station, which at times is overgrown with weeds. The other was the one that would take you to the Coalcliff mine (I think that's the name of it). We were able to get halfway through this tunnel but it goes down hill and the second half is used as a tailings dam for the adjacent mine. I didn't happen to have diving gear unfortunately. The glow worms were quite dominant. These tunnels have since been boarded up by the fun police.