Streamliners festival organiser Bernie Baker features on Discovery Channel

The Parkes man brought his Streamliners festival to Goulburn in 2016, and is now set to feature in a Discovery Channel series.

A self-confessed “trainiac”, Baker has a 100-strong model train collection at home. He reckons he sees the same passion in his son, Stuart, 6, who already rivals his dad thanks to an extensive Thomas the Tank Engine set.

One time, to take a photo of a passing train, Baker climbed an electrical pylon and was struck by 600 volts. He was in a coma for two months and woke to find his leg missing. This would crush most people, but Baker didn’t let it get him down. He has been driving ever since. 

Baker’s passion for diesel locomotives saw him spend the past 16 years planning Streamliners 2016, one of Australia’s biggest train events. He worked tirelessly to get two dozen locomotives and hundreds of train enthusiasts to converge on Goulburn over the October 2016 long weekend, celebrating the 65th anniversary of the first Streamliner locomotive in Australia. 

With Port Augusta’s power station closing down in late 2016, Baker was tasked with the mammoth responsibility of bringing home 90 of their coal wagons.

To do this job, he had one condition: he needed a convoy of his favourite streamliner locomotives, with none other than the B61 Bernie Baker leading the charge.

This mission saw Baker and his Streamliners go on an epic journey through the historic landscapes of Australia’s outback. 

With so much land to cover in such a short period of time, while pulling 90 old coal wagons with even older locomotives, not everything went to plan. SSR’s locos had never travelled so far from home, which made this trip about more than just wagons: it was about reputations, and it all came down to Baker.

Baker’s story will air in Railroad Australia, a seven-week series on the Discovery Channel that will begin on Thursday, May 11, from 7.30pm.