Among many people (specially railfans!) the Liberal Party is seen as an anti-rail boogeyman, doing everything they can to slash and burn public transport and replacing them with roads. But the reality is a lot more subtle, as this 1976 election advertisement from the incumbent Liberal government led by Rupert Hamer shows.
From The Age, Thursday March 18, 1976
Some background
The Liberal government led by Premier Henry Bolte took over from Labor in 1955, starting a long period of conservative rule over the state of Victoria. Following the resignation of Bolte in 1972, Rupert Hamer succeeded him as Liberal leader and Premier, despite opposition from the conservative wing of the party.
From a transport perspective, the 1970s was a period of great change: investment in the Melbourne train and tram networks had stalled for a decade, as the 1969 Melbourne Transportation Plan proposed the massive freeway grid covering the city. New car-based shopping centres and factories were opening away from existign transport infrastructure, leading to a hollowing out of the inner city, and massive growth of new housing developments on the outskirts of Melbourne.
Premier Hamer then went on to win the 1973, 1976 and 1979 state elections, marketing himself as a reformist leader, despite the fact the Liberal Party had been in power for almost two decades. Hamer remained premier until succeeded by Lindsay Thompson as party leader in 1981, who then lost the 1982 state election to the Labor Party led by John Cain.
So what about the public transport achievements listed in the 1976 election advertisement?
New trains
Back in the 1970s the Melbourne rail network was still reliant on the last of the timber bodied ‘red ratlers’ trains – some of which dated to 1887. The 50 new ‘silver’ stainless steel trains were intended to replace the last of these. These days known as the ‘Hitachi’ trains, eventually 118 3-car sets were delivered: nine more trains than advertised in 1976.
PROV image VPRS 12800/P1, item H 4250
Lacking air conditioning, the first of the Hitachi trains were scrapped from 2002, the last was finally retired in 2014. As for the ‘new trains to a new design’ – these were the air conditioned ‘Comeng’ trains, delivered from 1981 and still in service today.
New buses
New buses are a lot less sexy than trains and trams. The 30 new look orange buses were Leyland National buses imported from the UK, with the 100 additional buses being 100 Volvo B59 buses imported from Sweden. The Leyland buses bit the dust in the early-1990s, but some Volvo B59s lived on until the early 2000s under National Bus.
New trams
For decades the rickety old W class tram were the mainstay of the Melbourne tram network – hundreds of them were built between 1923 and 1956, despite the archaic looking design by the end of their long production run. A long lull in tram construction followed, thanks to the future of the tram network being up in the air. This finally changed with the development of the Z class tram – a modern steel bodied vehicle based on the latest tramway technology from Europe.
The first of the 100 locally built Z1 class trams entered service in 1975, followed through the 1970s by the upgraded Z2 and Z3 classes, and in the 1980s by the A and B class trams. The first Z1 class trams were retired from 2001 to make room for new low floor trams, with the last being finally withdrawn in 2016.
New and reconstructed stations
Despite the areas of Melbourne passed by railway lines not having grown for decades, construction of new stations to serve new suburbs has been an ongoing activity – Kananook and Yarraman were opened in 1975 and 1976 respectively to cater for new suburban growth.
In addition, replacement of life expired timber station buildings was an ongoing task over the years. I don’t have a complete list of the 30 stations listed in the 1976 advertisement, but stations rebuilt during this period include Hampton, Macaulay, Glenbervie, West Footscray, Glenroy, Gardiner, Rosanna, Dandenong and Mount Waverley – all received brown brick buildings that look much like public toilet blocks. Many of these stations still there today, just covered with dozens more coats of paint.
Underground
Work on the City Loop started in 1971, with the first trains running in 1981, with the final stage of the project completed in 1985.
More express running
The automated signalling system referred to is the Metrol signal control centre. The history is a saga in itself – it moved physical home in late-1990s, then moved again into an emulated computer system in the mid-2000s, until finally replaced in 2015.
Free car parking
With the growth in car ownership through the 1970s and the decline in rail freight to suburban stations, surplus railway land next door to stations became available for the construction of commuter car parking. Construction of these car parks continues today, but due to a lack of suitable land, multi-storey car parks at $44,000 per space are now the future.
Electric train extensions
Extensions to electric train services are a big ticket item that politicians love to cut the ribbon on. Here the Hamer Government was on shakier ground: extensions west from Sunshine to Melton and south-west from Frankston to Langwarrin never happened, both projects still sitting on the to-do list. As for the other promises: suburban trains were not extended west to Werribee until 1983; Craigieburn wasn’t reached until 2007; and Sunbury took until 2012. Also interesting to note is the omission of the Cranbourne line – suburban trains reached there in 1995.
More tracks
Building more tracks in order to operate more train services – some real research was required to answer this one. South Kensington – Footscray is an easy one: the section was quadruplicated in the 1970s to separate trains towards Sunshine and Newport. Duplication of the single track Sunshine to Deer Park West line was an early win, though mainly to serve interstate freight traffic between Melbourne and Adelaide.
Other projects took much longer to complete: Macleod to Greensborough (1979), Ringwood to Bayswater (1982) and Ringwood to Croydon (1984). Caulfield to Mordialloc was a much more drawn out process: completed in fits and starts due to a lack of funding, the project was cut back a third track as far as Moorabbin, which eventually opened in 1986.
Triplication from Box Hill to Ringwood never happened, neither did duplication of Greensborough to Eltham or any track amplification along the Glen Waverley line. Duplication of single track sections of the rail network remains a pressing concern today, due to the restrictions they place on train operations.
New transport interchanges
Both transport interchange promises fell in a heap – Box Hill station cropped up again in 1983 and was completed in 1985, while Frankston keeps on coming up.
Geelong line duplication
Upgrades to the Geelong line look like just a promise – it took until 1981 for the section from Little River to Corio to be duplicated. As for new trains, in 1977 new air conditioned carriages were ordered for the Geelong line, but they didn’t enter service until 1981 as part of the ‘New Deal for Country Passengers‘, which arrested the decline of failing country rail services in Victoria.
Today the Geelong line is still just double track, but with a dedicated route through the suburban area thanks to the Regional Rail Link project completed in 2015, and the locomotive hauled carriages are still in service today, but supplemented by VLocity train sets introduced from 2005.
One ticket transit
Early versions of multi-modal tickets for public transport in Melbourne were launched in 1976 and 1980, but it took until 1981 for a zone based system to be rolled out across Melbourne. The same basic concept is used today, but implemented with a electronic smartcard, and not paper tickets.
Scorecard
12 boxes of public transport promises:
- Seven projects already underway,
- Half marks for delivering ‘more tracks’,
- Swing and a miss for the Geelong line and ‘one ticket’ – they eventually got done,
- And no ball for transport interchanges and electric train extensions.
Compare that to public transport campaigns from the modern era that focus on projects decades way from being started.
Further reading
- Judith Brett reviews ‘Dick Hamer: The Liberal Liberal’
- Liberal Party reflect on Hamer’s legacy
- Daniel Bowen reflects on ‘Liberal vs Labor’ thinking in public transport
It’s worth pointing out that Rupert Hamer couldn’t be a Liberal politician today, and most of his key signature policies aren’t of interest to the modern Liberal party. They probably weren’t of great interest to the majority of the Liberal party in Hamer’s day. Bolte certainly wouldn’t have undertaken them.
Apart from investment in public transport, Hamer’s government saw the introduction of effective town planning and heritage laws, and a massive investment in the arts.
Tim Colebatch has written an excellent biography of Hamer.
Agreed – Hamer was quite the outlier in his party.
Melbourne made a but if a better fist of it on the 70s.
Sydney struggled. We did a couple of things like the Eastern Suburbs Railway ( but even that took forty years because of infighting). The V sets were good, but apart from that, it was a bit woeful. Suburban stock from the 1920s. trams ripped up, old wooden side corridor cars from 3200 BC, filth and grime everywhere, and Granville…
NSW also retained ancient country passenger trains for decades beyond their expiry date – on the other hand the introduction of the XPT in 1981 was streets ahead of the Victorian ‘New Deal’ reforms.
Thanks for fishing out that 1976 Liberal Party election advertisement. It’s very revealing in many ways, as your excellent analysis shows.
The “dedicated route through the suburban area thanks to the Regional Rail Link project” is not really that, though. The Tarneit section has actually turned the Geelong V/Line service into a suburban service, as opposed to the promise to bypass suburban traffic.
yep
It’s worth noting that it was actually Labor (not Liberal) who put the nail in the coffin for Doncaster rail, closed other railway routes throughout the 80s.
Labor also removed heavy rail from Port Melbourne and St. Kilda and changed it to trams.
The 1980s/90s malaise in public transport is a topic in itself, especially the proposals for replacing trains with light rail.
A great walk down memory lane. And then there was the Hamer commissioned Lonie Report, and I don’t recall that very much of it was implemented. Fancy putting a former General Motors executive as head of a report into our public transport system and rail freight.
Said report recommended some very drastic changes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonie_Report
It would be interesting to discover the reasons behind commissioning the report.
Further order of new trains to a new design – wouldn’t these have originally been the updated Martin & King (Hitachi) design that never eventuated?
The upgraded Hitachi trains were apparently supposed to have the pantographs at the rear of the M cars (as with 218M through 237M) along with air conditioning, with the older fleet being upgraded to the new standard, but Comeng won the contract instead. That said, the Comeng trains had much better construction compared to the Hitachi trains which could literally fold in half in an accident.
Just awesome how the paper mentions electrification to Melton, Langwarrin, Sunbury and Craigieburn, the former two places still being diesel services, never mind the fact they actually closed down Langwarrin station rather than spend money! Of all the lines mentioned in the 70s and 80s, only Werribee was given the overhead, with Craigieburn and Sunbury waiting decades later.
A 2nd generation Hitachi train gets a mention here:
https://www.railpage.com.au/f-p822236.htm#822236
Apparently the VR built a scale model of the proposed train, now found at the ARHS museum:
http://photobucket.com/gallery/http://s164.photobucket.com/user/transam351/media/ARHSModels011.jpg.html
As for electrification to Langwarrin, it was driven by the need to build new train maintenance facilities to replace the Jolimont Workshops in the city.
Here is 1980s diagram showing what was proposed – two platforms, maintenance depot, train wash, stabling for 22 trains, and a railcar siding.
http://raildocs.wongm.com/suburban-bits/langwarrin+station.jpg.html
[…] As Marcus Wong points out on his blog, the truth about Labor Good/Liberal Bad with rail is more subtle than most rail enthusiasts say. Marcus offers a good defence of Hamer here. […]
Hi Marcus, had a good look at this post. Pretty comprehensive but I will add few things to it:
-Glen Waverley demonstration project. Those station buildings along the line rebuilt by Hamer were supposed to demonstrate an improvement. Lots of other works, like signalling and level crossing removals that were supposed to be done, but never done. Probably remembered more for what it didn’t do, rather than do.
-You mentioned Werribee electrification opening in 1983, but actually this was very much a Hamer project.
-the tramway extension to East Burwood Middleborough Rd and up to Essendon Airport. First new tramways built in decades and (with the Z class purchases) confirmed trams had a future
-The hitachis really should have been airconditioned. Plenty of US trains being built by then with air-conditioning.
-The ridiculous plans (failed to be delivered) for electrification to everywhere, new lines to Rowville, Doncaster etc, were in the 1969 plan which means it was ‘owned’ both by Hamer and Cain. Hamer never actually walked back the 1969 plan and Cain was so lazy in opposition he never reviewed the promises.
-Also NSW was no worse than Victoria. Both were running decades old stuff in service far too long, suburban and country.
Thanks for the additions – the Glen Waverley demonstration project has been on my list of things to follow up for some time!
I think Cain should’ve just gotten concrete bridges for the Leongatha and Bairnsdale Rail lines then concrete sleepers for the Broad Gauge Echuca, Cobram, Warrnambool, Bairnsdale and Leongatha Lines
Convert the Ballarat, Mildura and Adelaide lines to standard gauge using rebuilt Bluebird Railcars with larger buffet and selection of food the terminus of Mildura and Horsham Services with 8 railcars to connect the overland at Spencer St and many other regional passenger trains
Rebuild Cobram, Numurkah, Ouyen, Leongatha, Clyde and Cranbourne Stations
Close the Ararat-Portland, Ballarat-Geelong, Leongatha-Yarram and Bendigo-Swan Hill Rail Services
That would’ve been a better option than keeping the services assign platforms for services
Standard/Dual Gauge
P1 Overland
P2 XPT Sydney and V/Line Albury
P3 Mildura and Ballarat dual gauge
P4 Horsham and Ballarat dual gauge
Broad Gauge
P5 Cobram and Seymour
P6 Echuca and Kyneton
P7 Warrnambool and South Geelong/Geelong
P8 Leongatha and Yarram (potentially)
P9 Warragul and Bairnsdale
Then redo the Vinelander to Mildura with Platform 3 for nights only at speed 130 km/p
After 5 yrs of reconstruction then start on Spencer St to make more modern with a new coach terminal
New different designed especially for broad gauge rail cars to run in Broad Gauge Areas
Shepparton, Sale, Bendigo and Donald Services to be extended to Mildura, Cobram, Bairnsdale and Echuca making it less costly to run
Then Kennett comes along to find a system in a wreck so he closes the Sale-Bairnsdale, Leongatha-Yarram and Shepparton-Cobram Services private rail companies for the Shepparton, Mildura and Warrnambool Lines
That’s another take
There is a paper here on the evolution of concrete sleepers in Australia – the first deployments on the Victorian Railways were in 1974.
http://www.railknowledgebank.com/Presto/content/Detail.aspx?ctID=Y3RDb3B5X29mX1RoZXNlcw==&rID=NDgzOQ==&ssid=c2NyZWVuSURfMTc2MzM=