To celebrate the launch of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the Snook and I took a trip on the Gleewarts Express courtesy of Gleebooks. We joined Amy, Rob, and 800 other people aboard a steam train to a fictional wizarding village. And it was SO FUN!
Getting up at 4 in the morning wasn’t fun though. We had to be at Central Station at 5:30am so Amy and Rob slept over. Here’s Rob as Sirius Black enjoying his breakfast. He didn’t even have to comb his hair!
Amy is a librarian and thus went as Madam Pince, Hogwarts Librarian. Pretty witchy, eh?
Sirius works his “insane” face… which might be scarier were he not holding a half-eaten banana muffin in his other hand.
We walked up to Central Station – getting some weird glances from nightclubbers stumbling home – and found ourselves in the midst of hundreds of wizards. Here we are lining up to board the train.
Yeah, Rob’s already gettin’ tired of makin’ that face.
Check it out – an entire Quidditch team! These girls definitely had the most memorable costume of the day. Oh, and check out Neville’s Grandma with them…
One thing I loved was how much everyone at Gleebooks stayed in character and helped maintain the fantasy. We never knew exactly where the train was going other than “Hogsmeade.” They even had that show up on the departure screens! (The Sydneysiders did have a laugh over the fact that the only stop before Hogsmeade was Redfern.)
Of course, having 800 crazy adults and children maintain an orderly queue was a pipe dream. As soon as the train pulled up, all pretense of waiting patiently vanished.
Check it out – Platform 9 3/4!
We were assigned to Carriage 8, which seemed to have been reserved exclusively for adults. That was pretty thoughtful of them! There were twenty carriages in all and several of them were the compartment-type design like in the books. It was pretty comfy for an old train, I’ll say!
Here’s me and the Snook, bridging the Gryffindor-Slytherin love divide. Hedwig was a gift from my Dad’s wife Cindy last year and she definitely *made* my outfit.
Looking down the platform, waiting to pull out…
For some reason I just couldn’t get a shot of Dumbledore from the front. Here he is from behind. Very bushy!
There were seventy performers on board the train who travelled from carriage to carriage keeping us entertained on the three hour journey. Here’s a bassoonist.
The adults mostly sat in their seats, while a lot of kids seemed to be walking up and down the train looking at everyone. I liked these two Harrys a lot. The one on the left had cool Quidditch goggles.
Snookums shows off the Parselmouth skillz he picked up from Salazar Slytherin with a real live snake (that scared the bejesus out of me).
This violinist earned some big applause by playing the Hedwig theme tune from the movie.
The sun came up and it was a beautiful day. Note the smoke at the top of our window… That’s not clouds; it’s nastiness from the steam engine. Steam trains are romantic but they sure are stinky!
Snookums laughs as a juggler performs right next to him.
Hooray, the trolley witch! At last a chance to spend some of the wizard coinage we spent so much time/money making…
Quick! Eat it before it jumps away!
Another damn snake. This one was crawling all over Snookums to get to me, I swear.
Madam Hooch showed up at one point and gave us all a lecture on Quidditch rules. She’s holding the Golden Snitch here.
Welcome to Hogwarts! At last we arrived. (Shh! It was really Mossvale.)
We’d been assigned to “houses” for the purposes of receiving our food and books, and ostensibly we were all supposed to go stand near our banners. Really we all just milled around confused for a while. (Our adult carriage were all “Slytherin,” presumably because kids would’ve cried if they’d been assigned there.)
Another shot of the crowd. Several parents met us at the station, so that explains some of the Muggle dress here.
Food! Morning tea was catered by The Three Broomsticks as seen here. We had sausage rolls and cauldron cakes and bags of candy, and everyone got a bottle of butterbeer.
The aforementioned butterbeer. They even had custom labels printed up that said it’d been brewed by goblins!
As a homebrewer, Snookums felt compelled to give the butterbeer a try. Unfortunately it tasted like ass. It was sort of a supersweet cream soda.
Another crowd shot. I took this one because of the girl in the middle who’d spray-painted her head orange. A Weasley!
We all counted down to 9:01am and the boxes were opened. Madam Pince clutches her copy here.
The Snook looks pretty happy for somebody who’s never read one of the books! (He’s listened to them on tape.)
I didn’t get the chick in the lion helmet at first, but now I think she may have been going for a “Luna Lovegood” thing…
Some people just plonked right down and started in on the book.
More readers.
Meanwhile the rest of us huddled for warmth around the clearing full of fire dancers. This guy set his pants on fire!
The juggler entertains an enthralled crowd. This is a pretty nice picture, if I do say so myself.
Madam Pince can’t resist sneaking a peek in the book…
“What do you think, Hedwig? Should we dive in?”
“Harry Potter and the Marauding Mancho.” That is honestly what I said out loud when I saw this guy. Mr. Weasley would never be caught dead in that!
I don’t know who this wizard was supposed to be, but he looked pretty cool. And regal.
There weren’t a lot of non-Gryffindor students so this “Fleur” really stood out. I would’ve liked to have seen her face on the way home when she discovered that her character’s nickname is “Phlegm.”
As other Slytherins were in short supply, we nabbed this way cool Draco and had him pose with the Snook.
I didn’t take any pictures on the trip home, mostly because I was totally engrossed in the book. Here’s a shot of the train back as we were all disembarking back at Central.
The insignia of the 3801. There are still two steam trains running from Sydney, mostly making trips for tourists and enthusiasts. According to the friendly volunteer in our carriage, none of the staff are paid except for the driver and the poor bastard that has to shovel two tons of coal for every forty kilometers we travelled.
Everybody wanted to pose with the engineer.
The Gleewarts Express from the front. How cool is that? It was neat seeing actual trainspotters along our route, who evidently wait just to see this old beauty pass by.
Another Platform 9 3/4 sign.
Amy and Rob at the end of a very long trip…
And lastly, me and my Snookums.
I can’t begin to tell you how impressed I was with the Gleebooks staff and all the planning that went into the event. Thanks to all of the entertainers, the 3801 volunteers, the St. Johns Ambulance staff, and everyone who helped out. It was an incredibly fun day and the looks on the faces of the kids were priceless. I can’t wait to go again!