Here’s another post of photos from ten years ago… November 2011.
These old tram signs from the corner of Elizabeth and Flinders Streets seem to have disappeared around 2015. On the bright side, the huge number of tram route numbers in use whenever the signs first went up (somewhere between 1943 and 1962) has been reduced to just three.
Originally posted here, this idiot speeding through the Bourke Street Mall would hopefully get a different response today from authorities, after the tragedy on this very street in 2017.
Old Hitachi train arriving at the old Bentleigh station
A route 703 bus waits outside Bentleigh station. Notable here for transport geeks: it’s before the level crossing was removed; the fare evasion campaign of the time; there was no proper pedestrian crossing between the westbound bus stop and the station. Thankfully that was fixed with the removal of the level crossing.
Yet again showing that motorists are their own worst enemies: car drivers ignoring Rule 128 and blocking the intersection outside Flagstaff station.
Another view from near Flagstaff, looking east down La Trobe Street
Speaking of W-class trams, here’s a (not very good) photo of one midway through the removal of Metcard validators.
Before the South Morang extension opened in 2012, upgrades including duplication of single track sections of the Epping line were completed, which enabled more trains to run.
Found during a clearout: an Ozemail disk.
It was around this time that I realised the corner of Flinders Street and Market Street was a good place to try and snap a train, tram and bus all in the one photo, because all were plentiful there. This was the first good one. I cropped it slightly and adjusted the brightness slightly, and have used it regularly since.
… Just last year I suspect that photo helped inspire a Matt Davidson cartoon in The Age.
Then Lord Mayor Robert Doyle being interviewed about the new tram stops in Swanston Street adjacent the State Library.
Here’s Doyle along with City of Melbourne’s Director of City Design Rob Adams and then-Yarra Trams CEO Michel Masson, observing the new tram stops.
Queues at Flagstaff to exit the station due to insufficient fare gates.
5 replies on “Old photos from November 2011”
I seem to have a recollection that W class trams had some of their Metcard validators cannibalised when the C2 class trams were acquired in 2008, because there wasn’t enough spare equipment to fit them out.
Ten years ago, I thought Robert Doyle was a good lord major and nice bloke. How times change.
@Roger, I would say that in some ways he was a good Lord Mayor, and certainly in the several times I met him, he was a nice bloke. But clearly this wasn’t the case for other people, especially women.
Gotta love how software and IT companies would nearly always put the floppy disk labels on upside down! The protective metal cover is actually the top of a 3.5″ disk, with the label at the bottom, unlike the old 5.25″ disks where the label was at the top; the “CH” marking is actually HD, meaning high density – 1440KB as opposed to 720KB of the older double density disks. Now we can fit tens of thousands of these things’ worth of data on a single Micro SD card the size of a fingernail.
Wait, you found a brand new floppy disk in November 2011 and not November 2001? :)
@Heihachi_73, the disk was much older, from the mid-1990s.
But it turns out you can still buy floppy disks! Unclear if they’re newly manufactured, or have been stockpiled somewhere: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002MBPJNS/