Students are busy..

Toot, toot: all aboard!

VCAL is very excited to announce an amazing project for 2018 that is a partnership between VCAL, FLO, Nalderun Project, Harcourt Lions Club and The Victorian Miniature Railway.

In a nutshell, the Victorian Miniature Railway club have a dream. They have purchased 64 acres of land high on a hill in Harcourt, just up behind the general store, and plan to build 2.4 kms of 7.25 ml gauge rail track and have the facility open to the public on weekends by the end of 2018.

Miniature Railway Clubs are made up of volunteer enthusiasts whose hobby is to give up their time, tinker with stuff, and play trains.

The VMR club has 22 members who live all around Victoria and come to Harcourt on their weekends to work on the project. Every second week, club members will travel to Central Victoria on a Thursday night to work with Castlemaine students in a variety of different ways.

The project was developed by Grant-Victor Gordon and behalf of Harcourt Lions Club as a means to create interesting educational opportunities for VCAL, FLO and Nalderun students of The Mount Alexander Shire and has a range of community partners supporting various aspects of the project.

On Friday 1st December, as part of The Step-Up Program, 2018 VCAL students visited the site and were given a background briefing by Colin Mierisch, whose son Andrew is the driving force behind the project.

Colin himself is a very interesting fellow. He has been involved in miniature trains for over 40 years, has a range of engineering skills and qualifications, and in his spare time is into clocks and watches.

The project will combine VCAL outcomes in Personal Development, Work Related Skills and Numeracy and will give students access to mentors with diverse engineering and hands-on skills.

Apart from physically constructing the 2.4 km of track, plans are afoot to build a 1:3 scale model station based on the design of Maryborough Station, car parking areas and public amenity. Once the project is open to the public, the trains will run on weekends and school holidays.

VCAL students were impressed by the concept and we look forward to fleshing things out further for 2018.

Exciting times ahead.