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 OUR railway track has suddenly grown teeth.
The jagged central rail that appears on the West Coast Wilderness Railway at Dubbil Barril is a sign that we are about to start the steep section.
It's easy to miss the difference in track because Dubbil Barril is the action station on an autumn journey along the Abt Railway.
Passengers travelling Queenstown-Strahan meet passengers going the other way.
Lunch boxes are dished out and the engines are shunted so that the steam locomotive can drag carriages over the 1-in-20 ruling gradient up to Rinadeena.
This, and the 1-in-16 gradient from Rinadeena to Halls Creek, are the steepest sections and precisely why 1890s Mount Lyell Mining Company bosses needed to find a revolutionary technology that could help a train climb mountains.
The activity at Dubbil Barril, apparently Aboriginal words for dividing of the waters, offers marvellous photo opportunities.
We have travelled up from Strahan under diesel power and the steam loco is a raucous contrast as drivers juggle their engines onto the shunting circle and turn the beasts around.
Steam envelopes the engine, the track and the station; the sun pushes through rainforest to illuminate the abrupt white blanket. Dubbil Barril disappears and only an iron horse emerges from the shroud.
A short walk takes visitors underneath one of more than 40 bridges along the line. Looking up at the volume of timber gives an inkling of the magnitude of both the original project and the restoration work that started in the 1990s.
Back aboard, our premier class carriage has been hitched directly behind the loco and the rhythm of the journey is somehow familiar.
The little engine is saying ``I think I can, I think I can'' as it chuffs towards King River Gorge and the sublime 180-degree views out the right windows.
Before we set off that morning, premier class steward Debbie Beamsley warned against leaning out for photos because of the danger of striking trees or walls.
The Abt's track is so tight in places that you look up through skylights to see forest canopy above or to the side and feel that rock walls are just centimetres from the carriage.
Ever vigilant to passenger needs, Mrs Beamsley is offering walnuts from Webster Fresh at Forth. The nuts compete with the pastie and sandwich and chocolates of the lunch box, platters of fruit and Ashgrove cheese and Tamar Ridge wines.
High above the King we eat like kings and, like the train, we are chuffed.
The uphill battle goes on at walking pace until we reach Rinadeena, a former gold and gem mine, where travellers can stretch their legs on a final stop before Queenstown.
Here I have a quick chat to Graeme Tatnell, the commentary steward whose father drove an engine on the original Abt Railway and whose anecdotes have been entertaining passengers for hours.
``I used to sit there,'' he says, gesturing to a corner of the engine cabin. ``The engine drivers would throw berries to me.''
That's a wonderful thing about the West Coast Wilderness Railway. It links the past with the present and does so in style.
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writer was a guest of West Coast Wilderness Railway.
For details see puretasmania.com.au or call 1800 420 155.
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