Historic Photo of the Day: 2025-12-20

Today's historic photo of the day: Exactly 39 years ago today, VLine railcar DRC43 bound for Stony Point heads south out of Frankston, Victoria, December 20 1986. The Stony Point line serves the Eastern side of the Mornington Peninsula south of Melbourne. It operates as a shuttle connecting at Frankston with electric trains to and from Melbourne. You can just see the very last overhead electric stanchion just behind the train as it leaves electrified territory. In 1986 the service was operated by DRC railcars such as the one photographed. Since then the service has been provided by A class locomotives hauling passenger carriages, and today the service continues as a Sprinter railcar service. This particular railcar has an interesting history. It first entered service in 1971 as PCH 1227 of the NSW railways to operate the Riverina Express. The idea was that a train made up of many of these self-propelled cars would operate directly to and from the numerous branch line destinations as 'straight through' trains by attaching and detaching at junction stations. They were however not successful on those services and this car and one other were sold to the Victorian Railways in 1974 to add to their DRC fleet as seen here. By 1995 all VLine DRCs and NSW PCH cars had been retired.