The city of Porto and its famous So Bento railway station is the gateway to the valley and to get visitors in the mood the station has a special wine tasting room where they can sample the port before heading off to the different wine regions like Tvora-Varosa that also grows cherries and apples.

And the valley boasts its cold winters and high altitudes gives the grapes an excellent quality.

Does all that sound slightly familiar?

Of course Orange's grape-growing areas aren't terraced and there certainly isn't 40,000 hectares of them like the Douro Valley but we've got more than 50 vineyards, we grow cherries and apples and we have a cold winter climate.

But we're missing out on a wine tasting room at the railway station even though we've only got one train a day. However, it wasn't always like that.

Back in the good old days, as they say, the station had a bar, or officially called refreshment room, that as well as cups of tea and cake opened and sold alcohol when a train stopped for 10 minutes or so, particularly at night when there was a string of mail trains.

That was long enough for the odd passenger or two and the blokes sorting mail on the travelling post office vans to hop off, rush into the bar and belt down a couple of rums to warm their innards.

The venue was also a favourite late night/early morning watering hole for CWD journalists and printers to wet their whistles after knocking off and who were privileged to be able to stay on between trains when the bar was closed.

You just had to be quiet so the cops checking things out on the platform and passengers waiting for a train to arrive didn't hear you.

Ahh, them were the days even though there weren't any Orange wines to serve up back then.

But think what a gateway to Orange the station could be if we could convince the government to give us more trains.

We only want a daily return service and we could become Porto's famous So Bento railway station of the central west.

E-bike retailers are telling us they're as slick as a typical car and with a battery and electric motor they're enabling cyclists to travel further and faster with less effort.

They've got LCD displays and USB power-ports and people can just jump on and go, only charging the battery once or twice a week.

The bikes start at around $2,000 and go up to $6,000 but retailers say they're so cheap to run that you can't make comparisons with cars.

A charge costs 25 cents to 30 cents and owners get 60km of riding from that.

Convincing people to buy one the e-bikes is probably not a bad idea because in Orange we could get rid of more than 400 single occupant cars parked in streets around the central business district every day.

But imagine the chaos? Hundreds of e-bike riders weaving in and out of our aggressive bull-barred SUV drivers every morning and then again at knock-off time in the afternoon.

The bikes might get rid of some cars but instead would create traffic nightmares. And there'd be cyclists knocked over everywhere.

That mobile speed camera that's been saving so many lives in Woodward Street in front of Elephant Park has been idle the past three months while the council was building the new roundabout at the Woodward St-Wentworth Lane intersection.

The roadworks had compromised the camera's favourite spot.

The roundabout was finished a week or so ago and the camera is already back.

It would be far better parked somewhere where it might save a life or two rather than collecting revenue.