After almost a month of major works, including bus replacements for trains between the City and Dandenong and Moorabbin, trains returned to the Frankston and Dandenong (Cranbourne/Pakenham) lines on Saturday 28th January. The works included rationalisation of the junction at Caulfield, points installed near the Metro tunnel eastern portal in South Yarra, and a lot ... [More]
Back in the Mother Country, they just opened the new rail line across central London. Known as Crossrail during construction, it’s officially now called the Elizabeth Line. In an article in the Australian Financial Review, Crossrail CEO (and former PTV CEO) Mark Wild compared Crossrail with two of the biggest Australian rail projects: the Melbourne ... [More]
Thanks to the Metro tunnel team (specifically the guys at Cross Yarra Partnership) I managed to get a ticket to the tour of Arden station held yesterday. Arden Station is named after nearby Arden Street, and will be located in a new urban renewal precinct of the same name. The station will be between Footscray ... [More]
Sometimes my walks take me to interesting places. On Saturday while walking in South Kensington, I found myself at the site of the Metro Tunnel’s western portal. To my surprise, there was nobody around, no signage saying to stay out, and no closed gate. So I peeked around the corner to snap some photos of ... [More]
Rail Projects Victoria has released some draft plans for parts of the Metro 1 project. The plans include both portals (where the tunnel connects to the existing aboveground tracks) and the western turnback – a facility to be added at West Footscray station to turnback (terminate and/or originate) train services through the tunnel. Below are ... [More]
It’s perhaps a minor thing, but… Back in November 2017 the metro tunnel station names were announced, including a new station called North Melbourne, with the current station to be renamed to West Melbourne. (See update at bottom of article. This plan was cancelled in early 2020.) I don’t have a problem with that. It’s ... [More]
If you live in Melbourne, you’ve almost certainly heard of the Melbourne Metro Rail Tunnel project (MMRT for short, but to avoid confusion here, I’ll call it Metro 1). You may or may not have also heard of the Metro 2 project. So what is it? It used to be the second stage of Metro ... [More]
So the Metro tunnel station names will be, from south to north… Anzac (working name Domain) — located more-or-less underneath the Shrine of Remembrance, of course. (The Shrine Trustees didn’t want the word Shrine used, by the way. I wonder how they feel about Anzac. Given the usual tight control over the name, I assume ... [More]
Just posted on the holiday blog: Brussels — where I meet my new baby cousin in a tram museum (of course!)đśđ The state government are running a competition for naming the new stations to be built as part of the metro rail tunnel. It’s a good idea to get suggestions. Some of the working names ... [More]
The metro rail tunnel concept is about ten years old, having first publicly emerged in late-2005. In some quarters, it’s been seen as an unnecessary white elephant — an expensive way of providing for extra passenger capacity in the CBD, when other cheaper ways were available to cope with increased patronage. But time has passed, ... [More]