Another instalment in my photos from ten years ago series – this time it is May 2014.
Regional Rail Link
The Regional Rail Link project has been an ongoing theme in this series, and this month we see progress on the rebuidling Footscray platforms 3 and 4 for V/Line trains.
With V/Line services still sharing the tracks with suburban trains, such as this since-retired P class hauled push-pull train.
And this also retired A class locomotive-hauled train.
The tracks towards Sunshine were already in place, but still being finished off.
As was the junction for Bendigo trains at Sunshine.
The trees found at what was once David Matthews Park were still in place, but they’ve since been cut down – the land sold off for townhouses.
Southern Cross Station
At the entrance to the station the Water Tower Clock was ready to be unveiled.
A big red curtain erected over the top.
Ready for the unveiling held on 14 May 2014.
Meanwhile at the other end of the station, work was still underway on the 699 Bourke Street development.
While trains continued to use platforms 13 through 16 down below.
Note the lights on the ceiling were still operational – they failed a few months later and have never been fixed.
Myki receipts
Remember when unwanted Myki receipts used to cover railway stations and tram stops all over Melbourne?
That problem wasn’t fixed until June 2019!
The crumbling station building at Newmarket
In 2013 I noticed that the foundations of the station building at Newmarket was falling apart, with Metro deciding to demolish the station.
But after a public outcry they backpedaled, adding a web of steelwork beneath the building, and replacing the cantilevered verandah with a freestanding steel structure, which is still in place today.
Ding ding on the trams
Remember the Colonial Tramcar Restaurant?
I also found a faded ‘Bumblebee’ tram headed down Bourke Street.
They’re still used on route 96 today, but have since received a refreshed PTV livery.
Over on Collins Street, the recently installed plastic kerbs along the tracks didn’t do much to stop taxi drivers making u-turns in front of trams and getting t-boned.
A problem not solved until 2022, when much higher concrete barriers were installed.
Rickety old W class trams were also still being used on route 30 across the top of the CBD.
They were finally demoted to the City Circle from December 2014, and replaced by modern E class trams in November 2020.
Meanwhile at Footscray, things look the same as today.
The high-floor Z3 class trams having received a stop-gap refurbishment in 2021 so they can stay in service until the arrival of the ‘Next Generation’ G class trams.
And outside Yarra Trams head office on William Street, the RTBU Tram and Bus Division was holding a rally in the lead up to their 2015 Enterprise Bargaining Agreement.
Tram and Bus Division secretary Phil Altieri addresses the rally.
Along with Labor MP and then-Shadow Minister for Road Safety Luke Donnellan.
A bus
Around Footscray the Westrans brand was still in use.
One of a number of bus operators owned by Kefford Corporation , in October 2014 it was rebranded as CDC Melbourne, and the buses progressively repainted into PTV livery.
To spend a penny
I was at Parliament Station and photographed the public toilets located beneath Gordon Reserve.
Opened c1924, they’re still in use today, unlike many other underground toilets in Melbourne.
And around the corner at Nicholson and Albert Street I snapped a cast iron public urinal.
One of eight surviving urinals around Melbourne which are heritage listed.
And the rest
The former MMBW House at 120 Spencer Street was a 25 story dull grey office tower completed in 1979 as the head office of the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works, which got an early-2000s facelift with the addition of a bright red band across the top.
But in 2014 it scored a millennial greige makeover.
The anodised aluminum cladding being painted over in a dull generic grey.
And since then it’s gone even more millennial – site of a WeWork coworking space.
Footnote
Here you can find the rest of my ‘photos from ten years ago‘ series.
For a couple of years I produced a double-page feature each week in the Sunday Herald Sun called Your Street, where I doorknocked a street in a Melbourne suburb or Victorian town and wrote about the people who loved there. In July 2011 I called on Buckley Street, Seddon and interviewed a handful of people who were still in the last of the homes that had been compulsorily acquired by the state government. They were sad stories — people who had bought their homes, expecting to stay there forever, and after a bungled government announcement (the media was told before they were) they learned they would have to leave and try to find a home somewhere else — invariably much further away and much smaller. They were surrounded by boarded up empty houses and pleaded with the government to demolish them once they were empty so the area didn’t look like a hellhole.
Back in 2011 I went for a walk along Buckley Street and photographed the boarded up houses.
https://wongm.com/2011/10/compulsorily-acquired-at-middle-footscray/
They had lights at platform 15? It’s ridiculous it still hasn’t been fixed. It’s so dark at that part of the station.
Southern Cross was quite a mice station when it was first completed, but it went downhill within a few years.
https://wongm.com/2011/09/the-bastardisation-of-southern-cross-station/
If (as suggested by you Marcus), someone may have hit the electricity connection whilst constructing the office towers above platforms 15/16, why couldn’t they just run a new wire connection to tap into the existing electrical infrastructure that’s already there?
I suspect the problem is getting access to the ceiling – it is above active electrified railway lines, so would need an extended shutdown of trains get get up there, along with some very specialised elevated work platforms.