Overland

Today the Overland turns 135 years old. The Overland plays a prominent role on my layout of Ballarat which is set from late 1982 through to early 1984. This was an interesting period in the history of the Overland with a number of significant events occurring.

From Monday 20th December 1982 until Tuesday 1st February 1983, both a daylight and overnight Overland operated in each direction between the state capitals. The trial was to determine if a market existed to justify the operation of a regular daylight service. To provide the two carriage sets, all spare joint stock Overland carriages and 3 Australian National AD class sitting carriages were used, the AD cars were temporarily spare due to the conversion of the Adelaide - Port Pirie line from broad gauge to standard gauge. One set was marshalled as PCO-Club-AD-AD-AD-SCD with the other as CD-BJ-BJ-RBJ-AJ-PCO. The westbound service ran combined as far as Horsham with the regular 0755 Horsham pass. The loco for the Horsham train was marshalled ahead of the loco for the Daylight Overland. The N set and VBPY ot VLPY van were placed at the rear of the Overland cars and were detached on arrival at Horsham. The eastbound service ran as a separate train throughout.

During 1983 the most common loco combination was double S class, although this would shortly change with the transfer of all the standard gauge 3rd series X class to broad gauge in October and then the introduction of through-running of 930's as second unit to 3rd series X's in November 1983.

Typical consist of the Overland was Motorail-VBPY-PCO=sleepers-club=sleepers-AJ=BJ=RBJ=BJ=CO The eastbound Overland (835) was timetabled to arrive at Ballarat at 7:05am. 20 minutes were allowed in the timetable for the Motorail and parcel vans to be shunted to the rear of the train. This was achieved by the train locos shunting the van and Motorail onto the Y or W class yard pilot in No.2 or no.3 road, with the pilot shunting them to the rear of the train. The westbound Overland (8141) paused at Ballarat at 11.34pm for 6 minutes to pick up passengers heading to destinations in Western Victoria or South Australia.

On the layout I use one set of cars for both the west and east bound services, changing one or two of the cars in the consist. I usually operate the Overland with 8 to 10 cars with a typical consist being PCO=sleepers x2 -club=sleeper-AJ=BJ=RBJ=BJ=CO. In addition I mix up the parcels van (either a VBPY, VLPY or D) and either include or exclude the Motorail wagons (VMBY) in the consist.