My wife and I took this 2004 train car #1 from the 7AM East Perth Station, arriving at Kalgoorlie at 2PM. It was clean inside and out, nice restrooms, efficient buffet crew, comfortable and modern with airline-type seat-back entertainment screens. Each of the 3 cars had their own engine that purred along, seeming to increase speed the closer we got to the end. We climbed through forested hills to a landscape of wheat fields with sporadic depots of huge tent-covered piles of grain, then numerous brilliant white salt lakes until the soft scrub/small trees of the Great Victoria Desert.
Our only problem was that our seats(#’s 25 & 26) had just a partial view drastically reducing our ability to appreciate and photograph the fantastic scenery which is available to about half of the passengers through the large windows.
Because we travel for the scenery, I thought I had chosen the proper seats after watching a video on the entire trip and being one of the first to reserve. We tried to change our seats but the train was sold out thus none available.
It was very frustrating, as most of the passengers in these seats with big windows around us were little interested in these views other than a rare glance up from their conversation, movie or book.
For us, this train would be a 5* with the proper seats(like #’s 15/16, 23/24 or 31/32).