Archive for March, 2024

Photos from ten years ago: March 2014

Another instalment in my photos from ten years ago series – this time it is March 2014. A few things new on the trams A decade ago route 57 was my local tram route, and one night I heard something different clattering down the road – a brand new E class tram on test. So […]

Stuck truck under the Napier Street bridge

Trucks getting stuck under the Montague Street bridge is a running Melbourne joke, but there is another bridge that gets hit far more often, but where the risk to the public is far worse – the Napier Street bridge in Footscray. The incident On Sunday 3 March a so-called ‘professional’ driver of a container truck […]

How can you rescue a disabled suburban train?

Most of the time electric trains are pretty mechanically simple – a pantograph on the roof is used to collect electricity from the overhead wires, which is then used to power the train. But what happens if something goes wrong with the overhead, destroying the pantograph? A few weeks ago Metro Trains Melbourne had this […]

So why is the City Loop inefficient?

As the new Metro Tunnel in Melbourne approaches completion, the inefficiencies of the existing City Loop have began to get more attention, with a project called the ‘City Loop Reconfiguration’ involving two short tunnel connections flagged as a way to fix them. So why is the City Loop inefficient to start with, and how can […]