More Australian slang. A gunzel, in the south-eastern states of the wide-brown, is a fanatical trainspotter. The word is similar to the British "anorak", with a couple of important exceptions: it is yet to leap beyond railfandom (one never hears of a ham-radio gunzel or a Beatles gunzel, for example); and in typically Aussie fashion, it retains almost no negative sentiment among gunzels themselves, who use it with some pride.

According to Bob Merchant, editor of the Australian railfan zine Trolley Wire, "gunzel" originated in the early 1960s at the Sydney Tramways Museum as a slur on visiting Victorian trainspotters. These gawking interlopers were named for the character of Wilmer Cook in The Maltese Falcon - Kasper Gutman's looming, thick-witted "gunsel", or gun-slinger. (For the delightful story of where Dashiell Hammett got the word, see Jet-Poop's writeup under gunsel.) Why it caught on nobody knows, but the years have inevitably softened it from its original sense of "unwashed tram obsessive" to more-or-less any enthusiast of the railways.

Gunzels also use the word as a verb, as in "going for a gunzel" or "gunzelling around".

The ultimate in gunzel pop-culture is the 1986 Australian film Malcolm, about a Melbourne tram nut. It's a funny, gentle, endearing movie, with lots of good shots of Melbourne's tramway infrastructure.