Regular pilgrims to NSW snow resorts will know all the secrets – like how you must get to Thredbo and Perisher before 10 am on a weekend if you want a hope of scoring a carpark.

Alternatively, you can catch a coach from the Kingston Railway Station to Cooma and then Jindabyne, before boarding the Snowy Mountains Bus Service to either of the big resorts.

Or Greyhound also runs services direct from Canberra all the way to the snow.

But – is there a better way to get to Cooma? It seems there certainly was.

Between May 1955 and September 1988, you could catch the Canberra Monaro Express, a six-day-a-week return rail service from Sydney to Cooma via Canberra.

After leaving Central Station in Sydney, the train – made up of two sets of diesel rail motors and four carriages – would travel the main south line through Goulburn to Queanbeyan, where it would then divide in two – with one set going to Canberra and the other to Cooma.

The Canberra Monaro Express split at Queanbeyan, with half the train coming to Canberra and the other half to Queanbeyan. Photo: Michelle Kroll.

Technically, it also replaced the steam-powered Federal City Express which ran along the same route from about the mid 1930s.

In a recent post to The Canberra Page on Facebook, locals reminisced about riding the Canberra Monaro Express, describing it as “great service” and “fantastic trip” – and often free.

“When I was in my early teens I would catch it from Bredbo to Michelago to stay at a friend’s place, sometimes from Bredbo to Cooma and back just for something to do,” one commented.

“Cost me 80 cents; more often than not they didn’t charge me.”

“My first trip to Canberra was aboard the Monaro Express; my dad took me in school holidays,” another wrote.

“Caught the Sydney to Cooma mail train; it was a late night run, took forever and too scared to fall asleep just in case I missed my stop in Queanbeyan and ended up in Cooma,” another said.

One commenter claimed it derailed near Michelago on New Year’s Eve one year, and he had to see in the new year “sleeping on a bench in Central Station” after missing his connection in Sydney.

Plenty would like to see the service resurrected as a “Snow Express”, and “to take some traffic off the road” during winter. Others suggest it would be a cheaper way of connecting Queanbeyan and Jerrabomberra with Canberra than another stage of light-rail.

“Bring back this service, fix the track at Hume and the people at Jerra could catch the train to work – better than light rail.”

All that remains of the railway line near Bredbo. Photo: Grahamec, Wikimedia Commons.

So, what happened to the Canberra Monaro Express?

It ground to a halt for the last time on 26 September 1988, followed less than a year later by freight services using the same line.

It turns out a major bridge near Chakola – just north of Cooma – had reached the end of its working life and was declared unsafe in May 1989.

Over the coming years, the rest of the track continued to fall into disrepair. In 1993, a 49 km section between Queanbeyan and Michelago reopened for tourist trains, but this too was later truncated to Royalla – until a storm in 2007 took out that final section too. The Black Summer bushfires didn’t help either.

Reopening the Canberra to Cooma line has crossed the NSW Government’s mind.

In 2018, it committed $1 million toward a feasibility study to find out what it would take to get it back up and running all the way through to Bombala over the Victorian border, as well as an extension to the Port of Eden.

However, even with a lot of “enthusiast support”, the findings were damning.

“The proposed railway is over 300 km long and passes through challenging terrain as well as areas of significant environmental value including major national parks,” the report read.

“Even if freight demand was doubled from the most optimistic scenario, project costs would need to be reduced or offset by 80 per cent or greater before any of the considered project options could deliver a BCR approaching 1.0.”

Chakola Station, near Cooma. Photo: N2xjk, Wikimedia Commons.

The main obstacle appears to be a badly damaged section between Michelago and Chakola that would have to be entirely reconstructed, including several bridges.

The Cooma Monaro Railway enthusiast group has restored more than 17 km of track between Cooma and Chakola, with the first tourist trains leaving the station in late 2023.

But at the end of the day, the vast proportion of the line is set to be turned into a recreational walking and cycling track called the ‘Monaro Rail Trail’.

The Snowy Monaro Regional Council has secured a $1 million federal grant to kick off works on a 5 km stretch of the trail at Bombala, while Queanbeyan-Palerang Council is also working towards funding applications to start construction at the northern end.

The Greyhound coach it is then.