So busy at the moment, but here’s a quick post about Armadale station. The original station (shown in a picture here) opened on 7th May 1879 – so it’s about to turn 145 years old.
The current station buildings are newer – a bit over 110 years old, dating from a project to amplify the rail corridor to four tracks and remove level crossings.
Vicsig indicates the project took from 1909 to 1914. A search of the State Library shows one photo dated 1912 that has two of the four platforms completed. Another (presumably from around 1913, though labelled as 1920-54) shows three platforms completed:
The Cheel Street general store
Fast forward to recent times.
A few years ago I noticed part of a heritage-listed shop above platform 1 was looking a little the worse for wear, and had been fenced off and supports installed due to structural problems. Wikipedia notes this was first done in 2015. (UPDATE: This photo indicates it was May 2017.)
A bit over a year later, not a lot seemed to have changed.
Another year after that, May 2020, still not a lot going on.
Another year goes by, with no visible changes.
Some time in 2022 they installed a sturdier fence and some nice Metro banners.
By late 2023, some of the banners had escaped, but otherwise not much difference.
As of April 2024, still not a lot happening.
Presumably nothing’s about to fall down. The occupant has moved out – at one stage they moved to the other side of the tracks – not sure if they’re still there.
Hopefully some substantial work will happen at some stage.
It reminds me of that time Marcus Wong documented similar slow progress at Newmarket railway station, as well as issues and repairs at Hawksburn and Camberwell.
Meanwhile at Toorak station there’s this, appearing to prop up the platform shelter.
Obviously the Big Build is going full steam ahead building rail tunnels and rebuilding stations as part of level crossing removals. Hopefully they’re also providing adequate funding to maintain the stations we’ve already got.
8 replies on “Armadale”
I commented about the state of Armadale on a recent Marcus Wong blog post and he linked to his photos of it going back at least to 2017 https://railgallery.wongm.com/crumbling-armadale/
Some more history, for anyone interested:
1915 track diagram, after quadruplication finished – https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RbTsGqooTKR21pkbD7G2rmw8Q5n0EWQl/view
Quadding construction plan – https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gvzdWNy_6X43q1iN5tydPmKDqSHOrrtI/view
Both above sourced via SRSV archives, link here – https://archives.srsv.org.au/search.html – search for the location name.
Apparently the cost of quadruplication (and removal of plenty of level crossings) was supposed to cost £200,000 but by 1914 this had gone up to £280,000; as of 1917, was £396,000, and by 1918 it had gone up to £427,909 (still under $50M in 2023 dollars).
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/190668376
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/155134464
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/223598722
There’s also a claim here – https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/143324545 – that the original cost blowout was “incurred without Ministerial sanction”.
More evidence of contempt the Victorian Government has for all forms of public transport.
We don’t have an ex transport minister as premier and an ex transport minister as deputy premier, we have just another generic batch of for-profit career politicians who just happened to be helicoptered into those jobs prior to being promoted.
The word locally is that apparently the structure is heritage listed and so can’t be demolished, but no-one wants to pay for it to be restored.
The former tenant relocated to the newspaper kiosk at the top of the ramp to platforms 2/3, but hasn’t been sighted for some months.
Pity the visually impaired traveler led astray by those peeling raised dots. A tripping hazard defined.
Slightly off topic, but I think Armadale and the other MATH stations should have the hourly Pakenham night trains on the weekend stop there, along with “train-replacement trains” (as opposed to the current practice of having train-replacement buses between South Yarra and Caulfield while the Pakenham line runs as normal).
As far as I know, Armadale and Toorak can’t accomodate the HCMT fleet?
I don’t really understand why Cran/Pak trains stop at Malvern off-peak on weekdays, but not on weekends or evenings. (I’d reserve judgement on whether they should or not, but consistency would be good.)
As a former Malvern station local that morning express that stopped at Malvern was the best haha. But yes its inconsistency is not great. Wonder how it came about? Perhaps the new apartment blocks being built right next to the station justify an extra service.