I wrote most of this after the 2025 Europe trip (England, France, Spain) but never completed it. Friends are currently travelling to some of the same places (yes, I’m jealous) which has reminded me to finish it: basically this is some notes for my own reference for a future trip. Luggage For three weeks in ... [More]
Around this time of year, I often ponder whether I still need a car. Why? Itâs the car’s birthday, so the registration, insurance and the annual service all come up at the same time of year. (Okay actually it was in July; I’m a bit delayed getting some of my blog posts written.) I took ... [More]
Alan Kohler does some terrific finance reporting, helping making complex concepts simple. But I think he missed the mark on this opinion piece on trams last week. (It’s only a couple of minutes long, so you may want to watch if you haven’t already seen it, before reading on.) He’s missed some of the history, ... [More]
A quick one, something I edited out of the recent post about the Melton line hybrid (bi-mode) train proposal: peak capacity on RRL. Currently the Ballarat and Geelong lines merge just west of Deer Park, where they run to Sunshine, joined there by trains from Bendigo (though these don’t actually stop at Sunshine station). From ... [More]
If you’re boarding the Sydney Metro (I’ll mostly use the line number M1 for short) for the first time from a CBD station, the first thing you see is the grand architecture. Itâs impressive, but you also get a sense that they have designed it for scale to carry large numbers of people through the ... [More]
Good to see pledges for this long-neglected part of Melbourne
Trying my best to catch up on my ten year old photo posts… almost all of the photos from these two months are of the level crossing removals which were going full steam ahead in my neighbourhood in Bentleigh. By July, they had dug out the trench for the new rail line under the roads, ... [More]
40 minute train frequencies – 1978-2026
Let me take a pause blogging my recent Sydney trip for this: Proper PDF timetables for Melbourne’s trains are around, but quite hard to find. Update: see bottom of post. The standard on-demand generated PDFs found on the Transport Victoria web site are customised to the specific date you ask for (and take into account ... [More]
Lazy Sunday morning, but we had to be out of the hotel by 10 am. The flight wasnât until 2pm. We decided to take it easy and explore our section of the Sydney CBD. We walked up to the QVB building and wandered around. Then to a nearby bookshop and from there up and around ... [More]
Saturday in Sydney. We headed out early towards Pyrmont. My partner-in-crime wanted to do the local Park Run, 5km starting at 8am. It was a decent walk – the L1 tram would have been an alternative but it was out for works all weekend, and thanks to bad experiences in Melbourne, I avoid replacement buses ... [More]
Sydney day two: I was keen to try the L2 or L3 light rail; these lines opened in 2018 and 2019 but were under construction during my previous visit in early 2018. The trams have certainly transformed George Street, which used to be a traffic sewer awash with buses, and is now a CBD pedestrian ... [More]
Long time readers would know that I like to blog my holidays. If you’re here for the transport content, there’ll be some, but that’s not necessarily the focus. It was time for a break from Melbourne’s winter. In 2024 it was the Far North Queensland and Thursday Island, in 2025 it was Brisbane. This year: ... [More]
I’m still catching up on my old photos from ten years ago. Here’s June 2016. We’d visited Singapore at the start of June for my cousin’s wedding. But via some contacts I also got to look at a construction site for the Thomson-East Coast line. Back in Melbourne, the local level crossing removals at Ormond, ... [More]
Lots of pics of Melbourne’s newest tram
This video on the PTUA feed yesterday was mostly compiled from stuff I filmed in Barcelona last year: It is obviously not intended to be a direct comparison between Barcelona and Melbourne. They’re different cities, though Melbourne and Barcelona have very similar metropolitan populations (5.44m vs 5.79m). Barcelona is a bit less than half the ... [More]