[tz] Indian Pacific Train times (not: Another change on Brazilian DST time)

Clive D.W. Feather clive at davros.org
Thu Oct 18 11:06:12 UTC 2018


Robert Elz said:
>   | >> Should we have a zone for these trains?
>   |
>   | They should have switched after Kalgoorlie, maybe about Caiguna, to Eucla
>   | +8/9:45 zone, before the state border, and stayed on that zone till maybe about
>   | Cook, or somewhere else short of Adelaide.
> 
> I don't know where you think the train runs, but it is nowhere particularly
> close to either Caiguna (at that approx longitude it is close to Rawlinna,
> a hundred km or so north) or the Eucla timezone enclave (which is quite
> small, and on the coast

Indeed. And by "close to Rawlinna" you actually mean it goes between the
airstrip (150 metres south) and the mine (1 km north) at Rawlinna.

> I've travelled on it a few times (though once is really enough ... there is 
> just so much of looking out windows at vast expanses of scrub land that
> one can take in a lifetime ... though it is certainly worth doing that once)

Indeed, once is certainly worth doing.

> and didn't recall it going near Eucla, so I checked ...

The best map I can find is
https://www.luxotren.com/files/images/media/mapa-recorridos.jpg
This doesn't have a scale on it, but Eucla is almost at the state border
and the nearest stop - Deakin - is almost exactly 100 km north of there.

> What times are used depends more on where the train will be in the
> middle of the day, and changes in the middle of the night, as (just like
> everyone else) having a situation where the train reached the "logical"
> place to switch zones just as the 12:00 lunch sitting are about to be seated,
> only for them to be told, "sorry your mealtime is over the next sitting is starting
> - we just changed time zones and it is 13:00 now) (assuming a Perth->Sydney
> train) would not go down too well.

In our case one change was at about 01:00 -> 02:00 (official departure from
Kalgoorlie was 02:30 and my GPS log says 02:28) but the other was
12:49:28 -> 14:19:28. I forget (and haven't recorded) when we had lunch,
but there were only 12 of us in Red Class and it was a buffet, not fixed
sittings.

-- 
Clive D.W. Feather          | If you lie to the compiler,
Email: clive at davros.org     | it will get its revenge.
Web: http://www.davros.org  |   - Henry Spencer
Mobile: +44 7973 377646


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