RAIL enthusiasts are in for a rare treat later this month when the restored carriages of the 1937 Spirit of Progress will arrive in Ararat.<\/p>\n
Seymour Rail Heritage Centre is running the special train to Ararat on Saturday the 26th<\/sup> of February with 156 passengers.<\/p>\n The diesel hauled train will stop for around two hours in Ararat, giving people a chance to come and look at the magnificent old carriages.<\/p>\n President of the Seymour Rail Heritage Centre, John Crofts, said the 1937 Spirit of Progress was the first luxury, airconditioned carriages to run on any rail network in the southern hemisphere, and 85 years later it is still a grand way to travel.<\/p>\n He said his group was keen to grow the number of heritage trains visiting regional areas.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we\u2019re trying to put in place at Seymour is premium heritage rail products.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we\u2019re looking at is multi-day itinerary travel. We\u2019re trying to convince the government there is significant market potential for tourism products and most particularly multi-day tourism products because they drive the night stays.\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the night stays that actually move the dial for regional economies, not day return trips such as we are doing of February 26th<\/sup>, bringing a bunch of people to Ararat for two hours is not going to move the dial economically for the region.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve also had some discussions pre COVID with Country Racing looking at bringing that same train to Dunkeld for the Dunkeld Cup,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The train is expected to arrive around 12.30pm on Saturday the 26th<\/sup> of February.<\/p>\n Passengers will have around two hours to have lunch and explore Ararat as well as visit Ararat\u2019s Railway Heritage Museum.<\/p>\n The diesel engine, the restored C501 from the 1970s, will be turned around during the stopover before departing for Seymour via North Shore and Melbourne.<\/p>\n The visit is the first by a heritage train to Ararat in a number of years.<\/p>\n A second heritage train will go through Ararat later this year with a planned trip to Murtoa.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" RAIL enthusiasts are in for a rare treat later this month when the restored carriages of the 1937 Spirit of Progress will arrive in Ararat. Seymour Rail Heritage Centre is running the special train to Ararat on Saturday the 26th of February with 156 passengers. The diesel hauled train will stop for around two hours […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":658,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[31],"class_list":["post-662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/t357p22.jpg?fit=1135%2C756&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdqUu4-aG","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theadvocate.net.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}