It occured to me that a lot is going to change in public transport in the next few months. Connex is on the way out, to be replaced by MTM trading as Metro. Metcard will be phased out in favour of Myki. And right across the network, there are infrastructure projects going on.
So I decided to capture some of the here and now, at least on the trains. Here’s how 350,000 or so people will spend at least part of their day today.
There’s a zillion train videos on YouTube. At least in part, I was trying to capture something different — not just trains going by, but what’s seen by the passengers.
It’s not intended to be exhaustive. The footage was captured on my travels over the last couple of months, which the eagle-eyed will notice is pretty much confined to the southeast (at least on weekdays, which is when this was all shot).
The timestamps are accurate — which is why some parts of the day are missing. I’m rarely up and out early, which is why there’s nothing before 8am.
The footage was all captured on my Nokia N95 phone camera. It’s not a terrible camera, but neither is it a proper video camera. There are noticeable glitches, particularly when a large object goes past fast horizontally — the trains don’t really skew like that as they go by. (Though arguably that looks quite cool.)
Will be interesting to see what this all looks like in a few years. No doubt some the same, some different.
8 replies on “A day on the trains”
I learned some time ago that what looks commonplace and uninteresting can very rap[idly become a thing of the past and an interesting historical record.
Thanks for posting this.
(PS I was wondering how you achieved that “skewing” effect!)
Good idea!
I have some things in a post for you at my blog lol.
As Ian said, a historical record. Feeding tickets into the barrier readers and having them pop out will be missed by kids at least.
Your phone camera films quite well but what is more impressive is the sound quality. The microphone accurately picked up most all of the little sound details that one actually hears at the station and on the train.
Not being the optimist, aside from a few cosmetic changes, I’m guessing the majority will be the same instead of different.
And if it’s a miserable day and you want to get the bus home, you won’t need to buy a Zone 2 ticket from the driver!
Jed, yes, the sound is quite good. I used it for this video and was quite pleased at how clearly the dialogue came out, given the background noise at the time.
Rob, ah yes, but the cosmetic changes are some of the most visible :-)
Peter’s referring to the bus zone changes about to come in. Perhaps the bigger benefit is now I can get to the Sandringham line without the extra zone 2 cost; unless I’m carrying something really heavy I can’t see myself waiting for the bus. It wouldn’t save me much exposure to the rain anyway.
Don’t you feel a little creepy filming people???