As the sun rises over the Blue Mountains, on a train platform 150km from Sydney, hundreds of tired rail enthusiasts jostle to secure a purple seat on board an old steel train.
Some had slept overnight on the platform. Others took a midnight service from the city to wait for a few sleepless hours before heading back the other way. A lucky few woke up in one of Lithgow’s motel rooms before the crack of dawn.
They are here – like me – for the final journey of the oldest electric train in New South Wales, the V-set. Once it makes its way though the Blue Mountains and Sydney’s nearly endless sprawl to Central Station, it will be officially retired.
Abdullah Balkhi, 18, describes the atmosphere as “rowdy but enjoyable”.
Before the V-set arrives, the crowd boos when a newer, more modern Mariyung D-set train pulls into Lithgow station, and again when it departs.
Balkhi and his friends took the midnight train from Sydney and are discussing the merits of the seats on the V-sets and the trains replacing them – a common theme.
“The [Mariyung] seats just aren’t flexible. You can’t move them around,” says Balkhi.
“[The V-sets] may be old, but they’re plush, you can sink into them a little bit.”
When the V-set pulls into Lithgow, it is welcomed like a visiting superstar, with cheers and a sea of iPhones and cameras on tripods and selfie sticks.
The “steel rattlers” are beloved for their vinyl, reversible seats and carpets in a shade that some call “bush plum” or “eggplant”, but most say is purple.
Blue Mountains commuters say the carriages’ old-fashioned inner doors insulate perfectly against mountain climes during the winter, although they can turn into a hot metal box in the summer.
There is an early morning scrum on Friday to get on the end carriage, which has been painted in the original royal blue and grey “Blue Goose” colours used when the trains debuted in 1970.
This carriage will be kept for heritage uses, but the future of the remaining 81 retired carriages, which date from 1977 onwards, is still being determined. Applications are being assessed after a call for expressions of interest by heritage groups and private collectors.
For the final ride, passengers were encouraged to reference the 1970s in their outfits or add a splash of purple or green (the original colour of the seats).
Balkhi is dressed a bit like Paul McCartney in 1969, in a black waistcoat and white frilled poncho. “This is just how I regularly dress,” he says.
Others have dressed up in retro Sydney Trains merch or purple shirts, including one group blaring Strawberry Fields Forever from a Bluetooth speaker. Some commuters getting on at later stations are confused to find their morning trip to work has been taken over by a magical mystery tour.
But the love for these trains clearly spans generations. Avoiding the crush, I do briefly find a seat – backward-facing – opposite father and son Gao and Jerry, who have travelled from Hurstville overnight during the school holidays.
Gao, laughing that it is “just my son” who is interested in the train, settles in for a nap in the camp chair he has slept in on the Lithgow platform, while Jerry explains his love for the V-sets.
“I try to get them any time I can,” he says – he took the final service on the Central Coast line last year. Like many, he prefers the “comfortable”, reversible, purple seats.
“It’s the nostalgia,” he says.
V-sets have been progressively retired from other lines, most recently the Central Coast. The $4bn Korean-built Mariyung intercity trains, with air conditioning and charging points but (shock horror) no reversible seats, have had mixed reviews.
They were delivered five years late, sitting unused in rail sheds after a series of union disputes and safety concerns, including the need to widen tunnels on the Blue Mountains line, on which they debuted in October. From Friday, they will fully replace the V-sets.
I found myself travelling up the mountains the day before in one of the Mariyung trains. With no empty forward-facing or reversible seats, I faced backwards. I could charge my phone and my laptop, but the air conditioning, pleasant at first, was icy by the evening journey’s end.
With the cool, recycled air and bright overhead lighting, I felt a bit like a lettuce in the refrigerated section at Woolies.
Linda Lewis, who has travelled from Sydney, puts it simply: “They’re not comfortable, whereas these [V-sets] are.”
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The Lewises use the Cronulla line, whose Tangara T-set trains are being refurbished rather than scrapped. Lewis says it is a shame the same can’t be done for the V-sets.
“It’s the electrics apparently that they can’t do anything about,” she says sadly.
The V-sets were commissioned in 1968 and built in Australia by Comeng, formerly Commonwealth Engineering, at its Granville factory in Sydney until it ceased operations in 1989.
In the train, with its aromas of metal and the sweat and excitement of growing numbers as the train pulls closer to Central, I am a sardine. Halfway to Central, an overhead announcement advises the train has become “passengerised”. Many new passengers are unable to get on.
The train finally arrives at Central, 15 minutes late, to a rapturous reception by a crowd of several thousand. A brass band plays.
The NSW transport minister, John Graham, says it would be hard for a train to be as beloved as the V-set.
“We expect those [Mariyung] trains to become more and more and more popular as people become more familiar.”
Holding back tears, the train’s driver, Peter Gunczy, says it is fitting that the service he had driven for more than four decades, known for its frequent delays, had arrived late.
“I’m truly humbled by today. I really am,” he says. “This is a really big turnout.”
