The Curse of Violet Town

ray

Violet Town, 174 km north-east of Melbourne Vic, is supposedly cursed
from a railway point of view as there has been more than one bingle
there (the Southern Aurora in 1969 is best known). Yesterday arvo,
Violet Town decided to target me personally it seems.
Cycle-touring northern Victoria as is my wont, rather than browse
Benalla for three hours, I ambled the 25 km in the Up direction to
Violet Town, arrived around 1230, had a leisurely lunch, then made my
way to the station to await the 1406 Up Pass to Melbourne.
Half a dozen other would-be passengers joined me at the tiny station.
The majority were younger than me, except one somewhat plummy voiced
lady who assured all and sundry she had booked into First Class well
ahead of time to avoid Cup Day booking problems.
Nemesis arrived in fairly short order, however, in the form of a
sub-contractor who had the booking office open (a rare event in Violet
Town these days) who informed us that the 1406 had been replaced by a
bus. The plummy voiced lady was somewhat put out (no first class on a
bus), to me it was more of a minor nuisance. The bus in question, coming
on and off the freeway, was running about 25 minutes late, therefore
1430 or thereabouts. The contractor hastened to assure us he was not a
V/Line employee.
So we waited. The 1422 down Albury (a three car N set headed by a N
Class, rather antique these days) came through five minutes early. 1430
became 1445, nuffin. Mobile phones starting running hot. Landline calls
via the contractor assured us that two buses, one express to Melbourne
and one `stopping all stations', had left Benalla.
Doom. One young would be passenger had a friend on the `Stop'. In due
course, around 1500 it was elicited that the bus in question had passed
the Violet Town turn-off and was headed for Euroa and beyond.
More, this time very annoyed, phone calls. Plummy Voice was well and
truly pissed off. Two taxis (!) were hurriedly dispatched from Benalla.
These arrived around 1525. My bike was stripped and stuffed in the boot
and we were off on a madcap ride down the freeway in the hope of beating
the Up 1707 from Shepparton into Seymour.
Which we did by half an hour, sitting on 110 k/mh all the way. The
re-assembled bike went into the guards van of the old N set and we
reached Southern Cross at 1828.
Exactly 2 1/2 hours after our original scheduled arrival time of 1608. I
noted from the taxi meter this escapade cost V/Line around $260, caused,
according to the neatly printed sign on Seymour platform, by a defective
engine.
If there's a moral in this saga, it seems to be that VicRail, in its
current guise as V/Line, can still f--- you completely up when someone
doesn't advise the Stop to actually Stop. Which they didn't yesterday
arvo at the much maligned (and otherwise every pleasant) Violet Town.
Cheers,
Ray

DaveB

Ahh Violet Town, the music capital of country Victoria due to:
a) The Church writing a song about it
b) Killing Heidi's Ella and Jess living there.

DaveB