Regional Rail Link

These has been an ongoing theme for many months now, but ten years ago Regional Rail Link was nearing the finishing line – the finishing touches were being applied to the new platforms at Footscray.

And the site offices were being cleared away.

The road under rail grade separation on the Sunbury line at Anderson Road was open to traffic.

Noise walls were going up beside the existing railway line around Ardeer.

And the new railway through Wyndham Vale.

Wyndham Vale station looked ready for trains.

But the street entrance was boarded up – the first train was still a year away.

V/Line trains still sharing the suburban tracks into North Melbourne station.

But Ballarat trains were snaking across the new tracks to use the new country platforms at Sunshine station.

Flinders Street Station

Metro Trains Melbourne was more interested in making money at Flinders Street Station than running trains.

Leasing the site of the long abandoned platform 11 for the construction of a bar.

With views of the Yarra River.

The station also gained a massive video wall on the concourse, screening an endless loop of advertisements.

They didn’t stop until 25 November 2022, where an activist covered it with paint, shutting it down until June 2023 when a replacement screen was installed.

Southern Cross Station

V/Line’s fleet of A class diesel locomotives were still in frontline service a decade ago.

While the western end of Southern Cross Station was a much brighter place.

But not for long – work on the 699 Bourke Street development atop the station was underway.

The work supposedly the reason for the failed lighting above the platforms, which has never been fixed.

New signalling

The Kensington Racecourse Essendon Signaling Project (KRESP) was wrapped up on the Craigieburn line.

The old signalling equipment placed trackside waiting collection.

The project enabled the retirement of the 1885 signal box at Flemington Racecourse, 1918 signal frame at Kensington, and 1969 signal panel at Essendon.

Trams

The last of the Z1 class trams were still in revenue service, but apprantly not too reliable – this one was being followed by mechanics onboard tram recovery truck ‘R10’.

And motorists were having trouble figuring out the bike lanes on Swanston Street – like this wanker driving a BMW through the tram stop at A’beckett Street.

While at the nearby State Library tram stop was the aftermath of an even less competent driver.

And new liveries

June 2014 was the first V/Line train painted into the new PTV ‘shard’ livery – VLocity railcar 3VL40.

The shiny new colors a contrast to the faded livery the rest of the VLocity fleet was then wearing.

The move to PTV colors had also started on Melbourne’s bus fleet, with Westrans moving away from their corporate livery, before their eventual rebranding as part of CDC Melbourne.

Footnote

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

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Going digging

Hawthorn station certainly looks old enough.

And the roof over platform 2 and 3 is quite ornate.

But this PROV image shows that the platform hasn’t always had a roof.

PROV image VPRS 12800/P000 H 4668

And the claims as to the provenance of the structure are a little loose – for instance, this web page straight out of the 1990s.

The station buildings are weatherboard and are part of the original buildings used at Flinders Street.

The Wikipedia page on the station isn’t much better:

In 1890, an island platform was provided to accommodate the newly opened branch line to Kew, using a canopy from the original Flinders Street station.

But I finally got somewhere when I opened the ‘Hawthorn Railway Station Complex’ entry on the Victorian Heritage Register.

Hawthorn Railway Station first opened on 13 April 1861. The central portion of the timber building on Platform 1 dates from the early 1880s, and additions have been constructed at both ends of this building.

After the railway line from Hawthorn was extended to Camberwell in 1882 a second platform was built at Hawthorn to accommodate the duplicated track. A two-station single track branch line linking Hawthorn to Kew opened in 1887, and following this the present-day island Platform 2 and 3 was constructed in 1890.

The large canopy on this island platform, originally located at Flinders Street Station over the St Kilda and Port Melbourne platforms, was dismantled and then rebuilt at Hawthorn on its Platform 2 and 3 in 1901.

Paydirt.

And over to Trove

I then headed over to newspaper archives at Trove, and the story became clearer.

From The Age 16 February 1901 spelled out the what.

The following tenders have been accepted by the Railway department:

Taking down iron verandah at Port Melbourne platform, Flinders Street station, and reerecting portion at Hawthorn station,
A. Challingsworth,
£599 12/0

And The Argus explained the why:

Some months ago the Commissioner of Railways promised to provide proper shelter accommodation at the Hawthorn railway station and yesterday he accepted the tender of Mr A Challingsworth for taking down the iron verandah over the present Port Melbourne platform at the Princes Bridge station and re-erecting portion of it at the Hawthorn station.

The dismantling of the Port Melbourne platform is the first step towards re-modelling the Flinders Street Station in accordance with the scheme for the new central railway station. Passengers on the Port Melbourne line may shortly be transferred to another platform while the proposed alterations are being effected.

The material to be employed to cover in the Hawthorn station will, Mr Mathieson states, last for many years to come, and the new verandah will extend well down the platform beyond the overhead footbridge, which will also be enclosed.

By June 18 work on the island platform had been completed.

The time which has elapsed since the railway authorities began to cover the island platform at the Hawthorn station with a shelter shed and the fact, that no steps have been taken to elect a similar roof over the southern platform, has led to the belief that the necessity for it has been overlooked . The deputy Commissioner states, however, that the footbridge connecting the Kew and Camberwell lines and the up platform will also be covered in before Christmas.

With the rest done by July.

The shelter over the “up” platform and Kew side of the Hawthorn railway station is now almost completed. The work was started about three months ago, but was considerably delayed
owing to a difficulty in getting the proper lengths of roofing iron. The structure affords an excellent shelter from the rain and will undoubtedly prove a great boon to the travelling public in wet weather.

But where at Flinders Street did it come from?

Today there is no “St Kilda and Port Melbourne platforms” at Flinders Street Station – back in the 1980s both railways were converted to light rail, and are now tram routes 96 and 109.

But the platforms still exist, immortalised in painted tiles at the entrance to platform 10 and 11.

But the station we’re interested in is the “old” Flinders Street Station.

SLV image ID 1742413

This photo from 1888 shows platform shelters, but they don’t match the ones found at Hawthorn.

SLV image ID 3250858

But this aerial view of the station from the north-west is much more useful.

PROV image VPRS 12800/P0001 H 2825

The roof over what is now platform 8 and 9 looks a lot like the one now at Hawthorn.

PROV image VPRS 12800/P0001 H 2825

And this lower angle view from the Swanston Street bridge confirms it.

PROV image VPRS 12800/P0001 H 2770

The fine ironwork detail and mansard roof line clearly visible.

PROV image VPRS 12800/P0001 H 2770

So that factoid was true after all.

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In the beginning

Back in the “good old days” paper tickets ruled the railways, each one of them individually numbered, and sold for a specific combination of origin and destination.

PROV image VPRS 12903/P0001, 237/08

As you might expect, that added up to a lot of tickets.

PROV image VPRS 12903/P0001, 015/04

Which took up a lot of space in a ticket office.

PROV image VPRS 12903/P0001, 015/02

The poor ticketing clerk being surrounded by them!

PROV image VPRS 12903/P0001, 015/06

So the Victorian Railways separated out the ticket offices at major stations – for example Spencer Street had separate ‘suburban’ ticket offices.

PROV image VPRS 12903/P0001, 015A/09

And Flinders Street Station directed country passengers to a single ticket offices at the ‘Centre’ entrance opposite Degraves Street.

PROV image VPRS 12800/P0003, ADV 1691

Times change

By the 1980s reforms to suburban tickets saw a new system introduced – first the ‘Neighbourhood’ paper tickets, followed by zone based “Scratch” tickets, massively reducing the number of tickets to be sold.

Scan via Reddit

And then cut back even further with the introduction of Metcard, and the on-demand encoding of pre-printed tickets by automated machines.

V/Line also went through a similar modernisation, switching to tickets printed on-demand by a computer terminal.

And then in 2013 something resembling a unification of the two systems, when Myki was rolled out to the V/Line network, as “one system to rule them all”.

But with one exception – the rollout of Myki to long distance V/Line services was dropped, leaving them using the legacy paper ticket system, which need to be issued via a computer system dedicated to the task.

And today

Southern Cross Station still has separate suburban and country ticket offices – Metro Trains Melbourne runs ticket offices on the Collins Street and Bourke Street concourses.

While V/Line runs their ticket offices at the Spencer Street entrance to the station, and beneath the Bourke Street Bridge.

Flinders Street Station also splits the ticket offices – there is a V/Line ‘Regional Tickets’ window beside the Metro Trains Melbourne ‘Customer Service’ counter.

Melbourne Central has a V/Line branded ‘Regional Trains’ window at the Swanston Street end of the station.

Oakleigh has a wooden door with a ‘Country / Interstate Booking Office’ sign on it.

And back to what triggered this post – Box Hill station has a little V/Line branded room beside the ticket office.

Footnote: printing paper tickets

As you might have guessed, selling each passenger a paper ticket every time they travelled used up a lot of paper – a million tickets a week.

PROV image VPRS 12903/P0001, 680/07

So the Victorian Railways ran their own printing works on Laurens Street, North Melbourne.

PROV image VPRS 12903/P0001, 020/15

And then sent them to a room at head office – 67 Spencer Street.

PROV image VPRS 12903/P0001, 159/08

Where staff would stamp the unique serial number onto each ticket blank.

PROV image VPRS 12903/P0001, 159/06

Footnote: a weird franchise fact

With suburban trains being operated by Metro Trains Melbourne and country trains by V/Line, the franchise agreements need to specify who is responsible for what. First, V/Line trains need access to Metro stations:

Schedule 7
Interoperator Agreements
Part 1 Mandatory Interoperator Agreements
1 Access Agreements
(a) The V/Line Passenger Access Agreement.
(b) The Station Access Agreement – NSW TrainLink for access by NSW Trains (ABN 50 325 560 455) to tracks leased by the Franchisee from PTV.

And V/Line has to have access to the ticket offices located in stations managed by Metro.

– The Sublease for the ticket office box at Flinders Street Station dated 20 November 2009 between the Franchisee and V/Line.
– The Station Agreement for access by V/Line to stations leased by the Franchisee from PTV.

Sounds like the only winners are the lawyers paid to write up these agreements.

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And not just once – this was January 2019.

And December 2015.

The key to the empty platforms – Melbourne’s poor off-peak service frequencies, which see most lines only seeing a train every 20 minutes.

With fewer trains running, there are fewer trains in the platforms, even though they sit there for an extended period of time thanks to driver changeovers.

Footnote: Southern Cross Station

Capturing all 16 empty platforms at Southern Cross Station is a little harder – you have to turn up after the last V/Line service of the night has departed.

Or early morning before the first train is ready to leave.

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West of Elizabeth Street is a cobblestone ramp leading up to the ‘Milk Dock‘ – the western end of Platform 1 that handled milk and parcels.

PROV image VPRS 12800 P3, item ADV0602

Milk would arrive from the farms on country trains, while parcels were transported around Melbourne by dedicated electric trains.

State Library of South Australia photo B 41019/163

Decades later, the ramp up to the Milk Dock is still there.

But the milk and parcels are gone – replaced by a pile of rubbish bins removed to fight terrorism.

Electric vehicles used to deliver dodgy dim sims to the platform kiosks.

New signage waiting to be installed.

And the closest thing to a train – a trolley load of rubbish.

Further reading

• Our Station Flinders Street – Parcels and Milk Dock

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Early in the morning, a load of gravel heads east to the Hanson concrete plant at Westall.

After morning peak the train returns, headed back to the quarry a Kilmore East for another load.

Just before lunchtime the southbound steel train passes through, headed for the Bluescope steel mill at Hastings.

After lunch, a load of containers rolls through bound for the Port of Melbourne.

The freight trains cease for the evening peak, and passenger trains take over.

But after suburban service frequencies drop, the freights start rolling again – first the return steel train, bound for the Melbourne Freight Terminal.

And then the return Maryvale paper train, headed back to Gippsland

Which tracks do freight trains use

There are ten ‘through’ platforms at Flinders Street Station – platform 11 no longer exists, platform 12 and 13 are extensions of platform 10, and platform 14 is out of use.

But there are a total of 12 through tracks – the extras being track 1A between platform 1 and 2.

And track 9A between platforms 9 and 10.

Freight trains are usually routed via track 9A, but they will occasionally be seen passing through platforms 7 through 9, depending on what other trains are running.

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We start over at Flinders Street Station, where Hitachi trains were still in service with then-suburban train operator Connex Melbourne.

Connex was replaced by Metro Trains Melbourne in November 2009, but the Hitachi trains hung on until December 2013.

Nearby signal box Flinders Street ‘A’ was being rebuilt as part of the ‘Signal’ youth arts centre.

But around the corner was the abandoned trackbed of platform 11.

It has since been turned into the ‘Arbory’ bar, opened in 2015

We’ve been watching the construction at North Melbourne station for months now, and in May 2009 the temporary scaffolding was coming down, exposing the new concourse at the city end.

Down near Moonee Ponds Creek I photographed a V/Line train headed out of the station.

Since Regional Rail Link opened in 2014 these tracks are only used by suburban trains, with V/Line now using their own tracks that bypass North Melbourne station entirely.

Once upon a time passenger trains all over Victoria once carried parcels as well as passengers, but in 2009 the ‘Green Star’ parcel service still operated using V/Line trains.

The public parcel service was wound up in 2010, but V/Line still continues transporting blood products for the Australian Red Cross Blood Service as part of a separate agreement.

Another much heavier freight task is the movement of steel products from the BlueScope Steel plant at Hastings, to the Melbourne Steel Terminal next door to Docklands.

A decade on the trains still run, this freight terminal no longer exists – the site was cleared in 2015 to make way for the ‘E’ Gate development, only for Transurban to acquire it in 2016 as part of the West Gate ‘Tunnel’ city access ramps.

Around the corner at the South Dynon depot, I found a 114 tonne diesel locomotive being lifted by a crane.

B64 originally entered service in 1952 and was in service with V/Line for 40 years until retired in 1992. It then went through a succession of owners who intended to restore it to service, but to naught – it’s currently dumped out the back of the railway workshops in Bendigo.

Another similarly aged locomotive is steam engine R761.

It also entered service in 1952, but was withdrawn far earlier in 1974, but retained for use on special trains, such as this run to Ballarat.

The steep climb out of Bacchus Marsh drew quite a crowd.

As did the spin on the turntable on arrival at Ballarat.

Along the way I stopped into the ghost town that was Rockbank station.

The station is currently being upgraded as part of the Regional Rail Revival project, but there is nothing ‘regional’ about Rockbank – the new station is intended to serve sprawling new suburbs of Melbourne.

While I was up in Ballarat, I stumbled upon for the former Joe White Maltings plant in Wendouree.

A complex series of conveyors and elevators once moved grain around the facility.

But by the time I visited the plant had closed, bulk of the site having been demolished in 2006, leaving just the silos.

The site then lay empty, with the silos demolished in late-2010 after plans to convert them into apartments fell through.

We end down in Geelong, where I picked up a “Short Term Ticket”.

They were a cardboard single use smartcard ticket, sold on buses in Ballarat, Bendigo and Geelong following the introduction of Myki in 2009.

The rollout of short term tickets was cancelled by the Baillieu government in June 2011, acting on advice contained in a secret report by consultants Deloitte. Supposedly the continued rollout was cancelled because the cards cost $0.40 cents to manufacture – making up almost half of the $0.90 charged for a concession bus fare in Geelong!

Despite the objections of locals, the sale of two hour and daily short-term tickets ended in Geelong on Friday 19 April 2013.

Footnote

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

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Flinders Street Station

Flinders Street Station platform 4 and 5 get incredibly crowded in peak times, with every passenger bound for Sunbury, Craigieburn and Upfield lines trying to squeeze onto it, along with a handful of passengers wanting to make their way out to Blackburn on a stopping-all-stations trains.

As a result, in 2012 the entire eastern end of the platform was cleared out – vending machines, seats and timetables.

But that wasn’t enough – Authorised Officers are sometimes deployed on crowd control duty, telling clueless passengers to keep on walking down the platform.

North Melbourne Station

North Melbourne platform 1 is another pinch point in morning peak, as passengers wanting to access the City Loop try to squeeze onboard already crush loaded Craigieburn line services.

Authorised officers are deployed to get passengers to wait away from the escalators.

But sometimes crowds of passengers still get left behind.

Congestion also occurs at North Melbourne platform 5, so ‘For safety reasons please keep hatched area clear at all times’ signs have been added beneath the escalator.

But congestion also occurs in the reverse direction – exiting passengers in morning peak swap the single escalator towards the overhead concourse.

So authorised offices have been posted on the platform with portable fences, directing waiting passengers away from the busiest doors.

At least the number of escalator failures seems to have dropped since their 2015 peak!

Footscray Station

A different problem occurs at Footscray platform 1, where passengers run at the closing doors.

The reason – V/Line passengers changing for the City Loop have to exit the station then enter again to find their citybound train.

Metro’s solution – post authorised officers to the platform to tell people not to force the train doors.

Southern Cross Station

Southern Cross Station is the prime example of platform congestion.

Platform 13 and 14 is ‘bad’ – when in morning peak an entire train load of Werribee line passengers will swamp the pair of ‘up’ escalators at the Collins Street end in no time.

But the morning queues on platform 9 and 10 are worse – waiting passengers block the train driver’s view down the curved platform, meaning trains are delayed in departing.

The queues for the escalator often outlast the train that deposited the passengers.

So Metro often posts Authorised Officers on crowd control duty to keep the edge of the platform clear.

Platform 10 also has a different problem in evening peak – passengers crowding the first door of trains, thanks to the staggered platform layout at the Bourke Street end.

In February 2018 Metro tried roping off the Bourke Street end to distribute passengers along the platform, as well as prevent last minute arrivals from running for the train, but it didn’t seem to go anywhere.

But the armageddon of platform congestion happened in April, when two of the three escalator failed at the same time.

Metro had to post a platoon of customer service staff to direct passengers up the sole remaining escalator.

Extra staff at the Bourke Street end, to encourage passengers to use the other exit.

Along with staff to provide extra ‘incentive’.

As well as a supervisor on the Collins Street configure to keep an eye on the entire operation.

Footnote

Over at Melbourne on Transit is a post on the escalator saga – Southern Cross Station: How it works (or doesn’t)

And a sidenote from Hong Kong

Metro Trains’ parent company in Hong Kong deploys plenty of platform staff to keep passengers clear of the doors.

Holding up ‘STOP’ signs to passengers while the doors close.

And a housekeeping announcement

I’ve just launched my page on Patreon! In case you’re wondering, Patreon is a simple way for you to contribute to this blog every month, and you get a sneak peek at what’s coming up in return!

Head over to https://www.patreon.com/wongm to find out more.

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The detail of the windows is best viewed from inside the station, looking back out.

I first took a close look at the windows in August 2009, and noticed that four five of the original leadlight panels had been replaced with plain glass.

But by April 2010 they had been repaired.

Which is easier to see in this photo from April 2012.

Photo by Maksym Kozlenko, via Wikimedia Commons

But by June 2017 another pane of plain glass had reappeared.

Scaffolding then covered the station.

With the plain glass disappearing along with the scaffolding a few months later.

Leaving the leadlight windows looking the best they ever have.

So how many times have the windows been broken in the past, and is any of the glass original?

Footnote

In July 2009 Neos Kosmos talked to Arthur Andronas, director of Andronas Conservation Architecture, who has been involved in earlier restoration works at Flinders Street Station.

Over the past 25 years, we have had the opportunity to conserve a great number of historic buildings, including The Block Arcade, ANZAC House, Newman College at Melbourne University designed by Walter Burley Griffin (the man who designed Canberra) and the stained glass at Flinders Street Station (above the clocks).

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Footnote

I’m not actually posting this on Christmas morning – I wrote it weeks ago then put it into my queue of scheduled posts.

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