McDonald’s

The McDonald’s in the Melbourne Central basement food court station has a serving window facing onto the concourse at Melbourne Central station.

While the Box Hill Central outlet takes it a step further – a serving window facing into the paid area at Box Hill station.

McDonald’s logo on the station signage.

And the McDonald’s dining room has next train displays on the wall inside.

Red Rooster

It’s not just McDonald’s located in stations – Red Rooster at Southern Cross Station has a “Walk Thru”.

A glass wall separating their counter into paid and unpaid sections.

And a failure

At Melbourne Central Station there is also a KFC service window facing into the Elizabeth Street concourse.

But thanks to it being a dead end for passengers, it has since been abandoned.

(Also blocking the view of the Geoff Hogg mural.)

Footnote: an interstate example

Brisbane Central station also has a fast food outlet inside it’s paid area – a McDonald’s.

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Off to Sydney

We start this month at Melbourne Airport, where the terminal was in disarray on July 18. But staff shortages weren’t to blame this time – but a power outage.

Leaving the split-flap display board in the international terminal stuck mid-message on ‘Ouckau8hko Jcahao’.

Out airside Virgin Australia was midway through it’s rebranding from Virgin Blue.

And Tiger Airways was still flying.

An hour later, my flight was on the final approach to Sydney Airport.

Down on the tarmac, I snapped a since-retired Qantas 747-400ER taking off.

Then made my way to the airport station to catch a train.

I did the cliche stuff like checking out the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

As well as checking out stuff like the decommissioned toll gates.

Headed to the top of the Sydney Tower to photograph the trains down below.

Down to the tangle of tracks that are the Flying Junctions outside Central.

I stumbled upon the “Pre Production Trial Vehicle” for Sydney’s new fleet of Waratah trains.

And stared in wonder at the realtime train data provided to platform staff at Central Station.

Riding the Sydney Monorail

The real reason for my trip was to ride the Sydney Monorail before it’s upcoming closure.

I went past all of the hackspots.

Wandering around Darling Harbour.

Down to the monorail depot hidden away in the back blocks.

Along the way I found forgotten signage from the TNT Harbourlink era.

And a complicated looking joint in the monorail beam across Pyrmont Bridge.

Used to allow the monorail beam to pivot out of the way of tall ships.

Ding ding

In 2012 the Sydney Light Rail was still using the fleet of 1990s Variotrams.

But I also made my way out to the Sydney Tramway Museum to ride their museum fleet.

And I found a Melbourne W class sitting in their display shed.

And back to Melbourne

My welcome back to Melbourne – going for a cruise down the Yarra River towards the West Gate Bridge.

And back up under the Bolte Bridge.

Far less entertaining was getting kicked off my train home thanks to a door fault.

The entire train load of passengers turfed off at Newmarket station.

Left hoping that we’d be able to catch the next train to come along.

The rollout of Myki was still crawling along, with new ticket gates installed at the south end of Parliament station.

But at least the new Swanston Street platform stops were finally finished!

Leading to the closure of the tram stop at Swanston and Lonsdale Streets.

Some passengers oblivious to the ‘tram stop closed’ signs.

Some things that have changed

Before Regional Rail Link opened in 2015 V/Line and Metro trains shared the tracks through Footscray.

It seems hard to believe today, but until 2016 Flagstaff station was closed all day Saturday, Sunday and Public Holidays.

And until 2015 free copies of the mX newspaper were being handed out to evening commuters.

And some that are odd

On a visit to the Port of Melbourne, I found six X’Trapolis carriages sitting on the wharf, fresh off the boat at Appleton Dock.

We also had the strange situation of a ‘Sydenham’ train line that terminated at Watergardens station – a designation that ended following the extension of electric train to Sunbury.

Box Hill is an odd station – still using ancient CRT screens for the next train displays.

A McDonald’s counter facing into the paid area of the station.

And a complete trackless platform – unused since the 1980s.

I also found a trackless platform at Southern Cross – completed as part of the Regional Rail Link project, but yet to have track installed.

But the most harebrained thing I found was some antennas fitted to a Comeng train.

The antennas were part of a $5.5 million three-year project, testing whether wireless communication between trains and road vehicles would reduce the number of level crossing collisions.

Looking back, spending millions to install radio transmitters on each and every train, along with dedicated receivers in each and every road vehicle, just to give idiot motorists another warning to ignore, sounds like a stupid idea – especially since we’ve physically removed 65+ conflict points between road and rail in the past 10 years.

And a NBN footnote

I also ended up at the NBN Co. Discovery Centre in Melbourne.

Showing off fibre in pits.

Curbside fibre distribution hubs.

And junction boxes for multiple unit dwellings (MDUs).

All were part of the Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) network that was planned to cover Australia, but later abandoned for the half-baked “Multi Technology Mix” of Fibre to the Node (FTTN), Fibre to the Curb (FTTC) and legacy Hybrid Fibre Coaxial (HFC) networks.

Footnote

Here you can find the rest of my ‘photos from ten years ago‘ series.

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Some history

Originally built to serve the country towns of Ringwood, Ferntree Gully, Healesville and Warburton, the land boom days of the 1880s saw the line duplicated as far as Ringwood.

But it was the eastward spread of Melbourne’s suburbs after WW2 that led to construction of a third track far as Box Hill, to meet the demand for demand for peak hour express trains in the face of private car ownership. Vicsig.net has the opening dates:

• Hawthorn – Camberwell: 1963
• Camberwell – East Camberwell: 1964
• Richmond – Burnley: 1966
• East Camberwell – Box Hill: 1971
• Burnley – Hawthorn: 1972

And there work stopped, with the exception being the provision of a third platform at Blackburn in 1980, to permit trains to continue running while Box Hill station was rebuilt as part of the grade separation project.

A little future planning

In 2007 the railway line between Box Hill and Blackburn was lowered to remove a level crossing as part of the Middleborough Road Project. The railway cutting was built wide enough for a third track to run down the middle.

With Laburnum station also rebuilt for the future – two platforms flanking the widely spaced tracks.

And in 2010 another section of the line was rebuilt, as part of the Springvale Road Rail Project.

Nunawading station was rebuilt as an island platform, with a two track bridge beneath Springvale Road.

And a hard concrete wall along the northern side.

But the southern side was left open, ready to be dug out for a future third track.

Then down the trench

We’re now at 2014, and the Mitcham Level Crossing Removal Project has just been completed. The level crossings at Mitcham Road and Rooks Road were removed, but thanks to the tight rail corridor no provision was made for a third track.

The track weaves around at the bottom of a two track wide cutting.

With the rebuilt Mitcham station situated at the bottom of a similarly claustrophobic hole.

The Heatherdale level crossing removal project completed in 2017 continued this pattern – a long deep cutting.

And a pair of platforms flanking double track.

While the Blackburn Road level crossing removal project also completed in 2017 took things a step further – a double track bridge under Blackburn Road.

And a narrow two track cutting headed almost a kilometre towards Nunawading.

So what happened to the plans?

The local councils in the Eastern Transport Coalition want the track from Box Hill to Ringwood to be triplicated:

The Belgrave/Lilydale line, with approximately 93,000 daily boardings, is Melbourne’s most highly patronised rail line. Ringwood, 25.8 kilometres eastwards from Flinders Street, serves as a junction between the Belgrave and Lilydale lines.

Linking many of Melbourne’s main activity centres and growth areas, the Belgrave/Lilydale line is critical to ensuring liveable eastern suburbs and now is the time to expand the capacity and allow for future growth.

The line includes a third bi-directional track through to Box Hill. To facilitate more efficient travel, including the provision of express services at Ringwood, triplication over the 9.6km of track is required.

Public Transport Victoria also seem to be protecting the land required to build a third track, based on the Box Hill to Ringwood Bike Path Project design options report:

Impact on rail services: PTV’s requirement to not preclude the provision of a future third track cannot be compromised.

A key aspect of this route is that it cannot be built without stepping on the footprint of the future third track from Box Hill to Ringwood without acquisition of private land. If approval could be gained now to build the path, it would need to be removed in the future when the third track is built.

But the PTV Network Development Plan published in December 2012 fails to mention it – a fourth track between Burnley and Camberwell, and eventually Box Hill appearing instead:

16.5 Fourth track between Burnley and Camberwell

The connection of the Northern and Caulfield loops to each other will enable the creation of a new cross-town line linking the Burnley local lines (Glen Waverley and Alamein) to the Werribee line. This line will be segregated and will ultimately have a capacity of 24 trains per hour in each direction.

However the key constraint to achieving this frequency will be the three-track section between Burnley and Box Hill. During peak periods, in the peak direction, the outside line carries Burnley local services, while the centre track caters for Burnley express services.

In the counter-peak, a mixture of express and stopping services currently share the single track (although in order to maximise capacity on the counter-peak track, all trains need to stop at all stations).

This configuration means that the different train services are sectorised going in the peak direction; however, they must share one track in the counter-peak direction. As the capacity of the single counter-peak track is much less than the two peak direction tracks, the number of train movements in the peak direction is limited to avoid train congestion in the city during the morning peak. This means that some peak direction capacity cannot be used.

To overcome these issues, there is a need to quadruplicate the rail line between Burnley and Camberwell and ultimately onto Box Hill. This would involve the construction of a fourth track on the south side of the existing rail corridor, with new platforms at Camberwell. The third platform at all other intermediate stations would become redundant and could be demolished if required to make room for the fourth track.

But even that idea isn’t a new one – many underline bridge between Burnley and Camberwell have abutments ready built for a four track, constructed as part of the 1960s triplication work.

So what’s better?

Daniel Bowen asked the How many tracks? question back in 2016 – short answer is that for a modern metro service, four is better than three.

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Planning for the project to separate Middleborough Road from the Belgrave-Lilydale rail line at Box Hill commenced in 2004, with the final business case endorsed in September 2005. Construction started in September 2006, and following a four week closure of the railway line in January 2007 trains started to use the new low level tracks. Landscaping and cleanup followed, with final completion in May 2007.

The project entailed:

• sinking approximately 800 linear metres of rail corridor up to 10 metres below ground,
• replacement of the Middleborough Road level crossing with a rail-under bridge,
• replacement of the existing Laburnum Street bridge with a new concrete structure,
• rebuilding of the railway station at Laburnum.

However there was one level crossing the project missed – that leading into the Box Hill Cemetery.

The first moves to establish a public cemetery at Box Hill came in 1872, when twelve acres of land off Whitehorse Road was set aside for the purpose. This pre-dated the railway, which wasn’t extended from Camberwell to Lilydale until 1886.

An avenue of trees leading between an ornate set of entrance gates on Whitehorse Road and the railway, an arrangement the remained in place until 1979, when due to declining funeral numbers and increased rail traffic, the main cemetery entrance relocated to Middleborough Road.

However an at-grade pedestrian crossing remained in place, until it was removed to make way for a massive railway cutting as part of the Middleborough Rd Project.

The locals didn’t like it, with local Liberal member Robert Clark MP taking up the case in State Parliament on 13 March 2007.

I raise with the Minister for Roads and Ports the Middleborough Road grade separation project. I ask the minister to take action to restore pedestrian access in the area by constructing a pedestrian footbridge across the railway line to Box Hill Cemetery and restoring a path along the north side of the railway line between Sagoe Lane and Middleborough Road. This is an issue that has been left with the new minister by the previous transport minister. It is due to the last-minute rush by the Bracks government to try to get moving on a promise it made in the 2002 election campaign to construct this grade separation project, but it failed to take any action until mid-2006; and because of the rush there was no public consultation and no opportunity for public input on the design, leaving a number of serious and ongoing problems.

There has long been pedestrian access across the railway line via a footpath that runs from Sagoe Lane on the north of the railway line to Box Hill cemetery on the south. This pedestrian access is important because there is a lack of car parking near the cemetery. Many people, particularly elderly people, who want to visit loved ones at the cemetery park their cars in Sagoe Lane or alongside Whitehorse Reserve, from where they used to walk across the railway line to the cemetery. Now the line has been lowered about 5 metres by a cutting that has cut off that access. A petition with many signatures was taken up on behalf of cemetery visitors, and copies were provided to the minister, to the Whitehorse council and to me.

I first raised this issue with the previous minister in July last year. The minister’s chief of staff replied in September, saying that the railway line would be lowered by 5 metres, that therefore an overpass could not be provided, that instead there would be a new access point at the north-east corner of the cemetery, that parking would be unaffected and that pedestrians could walk to the new access point. Now we see that you could virtually lay a plank across the cutting as it exists and that the reasons previously given for not being able to construct this overpass are unsubstantiated.

The government’s tune has now changed, with the new minister’s chief of staff replying in January by saying that there is now an 8-metre clearance required from the top of the walkway to the top of the railway lines and raising various other objections relating to land acquisition, design, tree loss and cost. Most of these objections seem to be spurious. You can just look at the site to see that it is perfectly feasible to create a footbridge across it.

To add insult to injury, when the government promised the alternative access point, it needed a path along the north side of the railway line, which VicRoads is now refusing to commit to restoring, meaning that the people who parked there previously will have to walk the long way around via Whitehorse Road and the Box Hill High School to reach the promised access point. In both respects the community has been badly let down. These are problems caused by the previous minister. I ask the new minister not to rely just on departmental or VicRoads advice but to look at the issue for himself.

At the 2010 State Election, the Liberal Party promised funding to build such as footbridge, in order to buy votes for Robert Clark.

A Liberal Nationals Coalition government will provide $460,000 to construct a footbridge to Box Hill cemetery across the railway line cutting near Middleborough Road, the Member for Box Hill, Robert Clark, announced today, 12 November 2010.

The Ted Baillieu led Liberal/National coalition won that election, with funding for the footbridge eventually made available in the 2012-13 State Budget.

Construction commenced in mid 2013.

Footbridge to Box Hill Cemetery under construction to replace what was removed by the Middleborough Rd Project. pic.twitter.com/WJu2qhfmfO

— Vicsig (@vicsig) July 27, 2013

With the new footbridge opened in August 2013.

The Victorian Coalition Government has delivered on its commitment to the local community with the opening of a new footbridge at the Box Hill Cemetery to provide an accessible and safe railway crossing, Minister for Public Transport Terry Mulder announced today.

So how much did it cost?

Turns out the initial $460,000 estimate was way off.

Work was completed on a $754,000 pedestrian footbridge from the Box Hill Cemetery across the Belgrave and Lilydale rail line. The steel truss bridge provides a safe and accessible crossing, following the removal of an at-grade pedestrian crossing at Box Hill in 2007 as part of the Middleborough Road Grade Separation project. PTV funded the footbridge.

And good looking to boot.

Just imagine how much it would cost if it wasn’t a steel cage plonked across a concrete railway cutting.

Think that was expensive?

North of Melbourne at Wandong, a footbridge was proposed to cross the main North-East railway line. A media release from 15 September 2006 when the project was launched:

The Minister for State and Regional Development John Brumby today announced the Bracks Government will build a $1.5 million pedestrian railway overpass at Wandong and Heathcote Junction.

And from three years later, when the new bridge was opened to the public on 25 August 2009.

A new $4.2 million pedestrian bridge over the Melbourne to Sydney railway line at Wandong is now complete providing a safe crossing for walkers and cyclists.

If you want to build a bridge and get over it, the cost isn’t cheap!

Presumably the different in cost between Box Hill and Wandong is due to the massive concrete ramps at each end.

As well as stairs.

Something to keep in mind when debating the benefits of rail-over vs rail-under grade separation options.

Further reading

• History of the Box Hill Cemetery from the Victorian Heritage Database
• Media release from the PTUA on completion of the Middleborough Road Project
• Selection of Middleborough Road Project construction photos at Vicsig.net
• Time lapse video of the construction of the Middleborough Road bridge
• Victorian Auditor-General’s report on the management of major rail projects, including the Middleborough Road project

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