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Thursday, July 9, 2020

Australia: Indian Pacific

One Friday I got four postcards: one from Australia, one from China and two from Germany.

The card from Australia shows the Indian Pacific. The Indian Pacific is an Australian passenger rail service that operates between Sydney on the Pacific Ocean and Perth on the Indian Ocean and thus crosses the Australian continent from East to West. As such it is one of the few truly transcontinental trains in the World and is considered to be one of the World's great rail journeys. The train's route also includes the World's longest straight stretch of railway track. The line was made possible due to the conversion of different gauges, which earlier has presented an extremely difficult problem for rail transport in Australia. Thanks to it the journey from Sydney to Perth now only takes roughly three days. For the first time the two cities were connected by the line in February 1970 and to celebrate the 50th anniversary of this Transcontinental Railway Australian Post issued a stamp on 11th February 2020. This card, which shows the inaugural Indian Pacific passenger train, is actually the maxicard of the stamp.


Like all Australian maxicards this one is prepaid.


Thank You very much Jingdan!

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