On this day 150 years ago, at 12:20pm, Australia’s first train service departed Flinders Street Station bound for Port Melbourne.
With that in mind, here is my local railway station.
This picture was taken on Friday morning. I actually use various stations around here depending on precisely where I’m going that day, but this is the closest one to my house. The railway line here opened in 1879, and was electrified in 1922.
Want to post a picture of your local train/tram/bus stop? (Or your parking space perhaps?) Link in the Trackbacks or comments.
To commemorate this anniversary, there were steam train rides between Caulfield and Sunshine today. At $2 a pop, it was standing room only, but everyone seemed to have a good time.
PS. Museum of Victoria has a great 150 years of railways web site.
6 replies on “Here is my station”
I tried to take a photo at my local station (Ringwood) last year and was told by the station staff that I was not allowed to! I didn’t have a train ticket at the time so I asked them if I could enter the station just to do the photo. They refused and said photos were not allowed. If I had had a ticket I guess I could have just gone in there and taken the photo. Why would someone presume that they are allowed to prevent someone photographing a public place? They might think they ‘own’ it because they are Connex, but they don’t own it. It is still public.
I’ll have to take my camera with me tomorrow. One for W’bee and the other for the Zoo.
And Phillip, there’s a fine line between public and private unfortunately. I’ve tried to do a couple of places for architecture pictures and have been shooed away. Public place but private buildings, it’s always confuzzled me.
This Is (Not) My Station
But it’s close enough.
It’s a shame that the Port Melbourne train line no longer exists today, being replaced by a light rail in 1987. Even today people in that area prefer the old heavy rail (10 minutes to the city) than the light rail (25 minutes). The Cain Labor Government at the time made a huge mistake closing the Port Melbourne and St Kilda lines and converting them to light rail.
I don’t have a train station near me… only ugly bus stops. But do love trains and love going on train rides – especially steam trains. There is a large public park near where I live – Whiteman Park – which has a light steam tourist train (and an old Melbourne tram).
Catboy posted his (somewhat less busy) railway station:
http://felineboy.blogspot.com/2004/09/ghost-train-station.html