She is CEO of The Q Train on the Bellarine Peninsula in Victoria, which is family-owned and operated as a successful mobile fine dining restaurant.
It runs between Drysdale and Point Lonsdale via Queenscliff and is popular not only with leisure visitors to the region, but increasingly with the business events sector. And there are plans to expand further into events.
The backstory of this culinary experience is as fascinating as the train itself, which used to be The Queenslander, an overnight service from Brisbane to Cairns. Trotter’s stepfather Andrew was a volunteer on the Bellarine railway for years and when he heard Queensland was selling off its train, he flew to Cairns to check it out.
“Then he called us up and he said, ‘so I’ve bought 22 [carriages]’. And so that was a bit of a surprise,” Trotter says, adding, “we worked with another business partner…brought them back on the back of very big trucks and started the process of renovating them, turning these long-haul passenger carriages into a restaurant.”
They enlarged the kitchen car and removed the individual compartments on some of the sleeping cars. Typically now The Q Train runs five carriages – two dining cars for 42 and 24, a private dining car for couples, the kitchen car and the power car. It operates five days a week, Thursday through Monday. The whole train can be bought out exclusively for event groups of up to 116.
Trotter and her team work with the Geelong Steam Preservation Society and a steam locomotive is used to pull The Q Train six times a month, which attracts the enthusiasts and children.
With a tip of the hat to sustainability, the steam engine is converted to run on waste oil, otherwise there’s a diesel electric engine up front.
The Q Train was showcased to about 40 buyers and media invited by Business Events Geelong on a “mega-famil” earlier this month. During the two-hour, five-course lunch trip, not a drop of wine was spilled despite the narrow gauge railway the train runs on. Trotter explains this stability is due to the carriage design and a new set of tracks on the 16km line.
micenet asked what happened to the 17 other cars Andrew originally purchased and discovered some have been sold off as backyard Airbnbs.
But Trotter believes there is growing demand for business groups who spend between 90 minutes and about three hours on board, so some of the spare cars are currently being refurbished into “an as yet unnamed function train”. She said the new product will have much more open space and suit 50 to 80 cocktail style.
“There’ll be lounges, cocktail tables, wine barrels, that sort of thing. And our old heritage disco carriage, which is worth a view…is under repair, but it is quite spectacular.”
