Another instalment in my photos from ten years ago series – this time it is May 2008.
‘Crate Men’ were appearing all over Melbourne – I found this example beside the railway line at Newport.
Also at Newport I came across a port shuttle train with a load of containers from the CRT Logistics terminal at Altona North.
These trains no longer run, with the government dragging their heels on their reinstatement, resulting in more trucks on the road in Melbourne’s west.
Back home in Geelong new rail infrastructure was being built, with an extension of the station building at Lara well underway.
As well as new standard gauge rail sidings at the Port of Geelong.
I also went chasing a number of trains, such as this Steamrail Victoria special at Geelong station.
This short trainload of logs bound for the Midway woodchip mill at North Shore.
And Pacific National clearing out their collection of life expired freight wagons at North Geelong Yard.
Up the road at Avalon Airport I photographed a Jetstar A320 arrive at the very spartan terminal.
As well as abandoned Qantas 747-300 VH-EBU ‘Nalanji Dreaming’.
She arrived at Avalon Airport in February 2005 for long term storage and was stripped of parts, eventually bein removed from the Australia aircraft register in May 2008.
I also paid a visit to Ballarat on a Seymour Railway Heritage Centre train, much to the delight of this newly married couple.
While I found V/Line’s ‘bus’ service to Ararat parked outside the station.
I found a much more conventional bus service outside North Melbourne station, where a pack of buses for the new route 401 shuttle to Melbourne University were parked.
At the station itself cranes were at work building the new concourse at the southern end.
With a temporary crash deck allowing work to continue while trains passed below.
I also found a diesel locomotive parked on the other side of the station, as construction work continued on the ‘Southern Star’ observation wheel behind.
The Southern Star wheel was shortlived – opened two years late in December 2008, it was shut down 40 days later due to design faults, and didn’t reopen until 2013 as the ‘Melbourne Star’ wheel.
As for the diesel locomotive, it has had a far more salubrious life – built by Clyde Engineering of Sydney in 1957 for the Kowloon-Canton Railway of Hong Kong, where it hauled passenger and then freight services for over 50 years, before being purchased by Chicago Freight Car Leasing Australia (CFCLA) in 2005 and brought back home to Australia for a second life hauling freight trains.
And we end on this touch of the 1980s I spotted onboard a V/Line carriage.
As well as my 1:160 scale model of a V/Line N class diesel locomotive, posed in front of the real thing.
Footnote
Here you can find the rest of my ‘photos from ten years ago‘
I’m always surprised at the enthusiasm for port rail shuttles along the Dandenong Line – with only two tracks at the moment, there’s no way you could run them and maintain a ten minute frequency in off-peak!
A handful of freight trains do slot in between the current 10 minute frequency on the Dandenong line.
The Apex quarry train to/from for Westall:
And the Maryvale paper train to/from Morwell.
Not to mention the hourly V/Line trains to/from Gippsland.
As you say, a handful. Not the same as running them once or twice an hour right through the off-peak.
That makes it harder, but not impossible.