Skitube: Australia's Amazing Alpine Railway!

Skitube is a fascinating alpine rack railway, located in the Snowy Mountains of southern New South Wales, and providing access to the ski fields at Perisher Valley and Blue Cow in the Kosciuszko National Park. It's 1435mm Standard Gauge, and electrified at 1500v DC using overhead wires. The trains are a really unusual design, and the railway has several features which are not seen anywhere else in Australia, and in some cases - the world. As usual, this video is illustrated entirely with my own photos and videos. The Skitube photos were all taken on a single day in the winter of 2011.

The railway takes a lot of design influence from Switzerland, and you will see several bits of footage of Swiss trains throughout the video. You can find the full versions of all those videos here:    • Swiss Rail Transport  
If you like hearing me bang on about transport, check out more videos here:    • Martin Talks Transport  

While researching this video, I found there isn't actually that much information on the internet about this obscure railway. It has however been extensively written about in several books:
-Rack railways of Australia by David Jehan
-Railway Electrification in Australia and New Zealand by Geoffrey B Churchman
-A History of Commonwealth Engineering (Comeng) Volume 5 1985-1990 By John Dunn
Some of these books are easier to find than others, but David Jehan's book is probably the best general account, and many places still sell it.

Want to help support the channel, get early access to new content and exclusive behind the scenes videos? Join me on Patreon:   / taitset  

The official Skitube page on the Perisher website: https://www.perisher.com.au/plan-your...

Chapters:
00:00 - Welcome to Skitube
02:05 - The route!
05:39 - Some national records
06:09 - The trains!
10:19 - Carparks & Conclusions

#railways #trains #australia #snow #mountains