This morning we completed the Railway Trail to Lappa and dropped in to the Lappa train station which apparently still operates with two trains per week. Interestingly next to the station are the remains of the hotel that once served railway passengers. It is now a private museum of sorts. We had quite a long chat with the operator of the museum, a gentleman in his 60's who has lived 35 years in this location.

Next stop was the little town of Almaden, and it really is little, basically a pub, train station and school turned campground. At this stop we found an information board that explained all the railway lines we have seen in the past few days. Note the map in the photos below. As the accompanying text explained this private network was built in the early 1900s to support copper and tin mining in the area. Chillagoe (our destination today) was the home of the copper smelter that converted ore to metal.

Chillagoe population 251 (2016 census) is a major tourist destination with interesting extensive lava tube caves (we did not visit any as all the tours are booked out), interesting rock formations and the remains of the old copper smelter. Tomorrow is the start of a 2 day music festival so the town was pretty busy.