Hawthorn, 1993-95 When I finally moved out of home, it was to Hawthorn. Initially I was still working in Burwood East, and the commute was an easy tram ride, from the flat we rented which was midway between there and the city — which became useful once work moved into town. Cutting through the back ... [More]
Murrumbeena 1987-89 We moved into a flat just across the street from the Dandenong line. The noise isn’t noticeable after a week or two, apart from missing dialogue on the television when a freight train goes past. It was a short stroll (if one took the short-cut along the train line) to Murrumbeena station. By ... [More]
Balaclava, 1974-1982 We moved back to St Kilda, settling in a flat in Hotham Street where we lived for many years. Well, almost. We were in flat 7 on the ground floor, before moving upstairs to flat 11. Later on we moved around the corner onto Inkerman Street. During this time, Balaclava was our local ... [More]
Here begins a series of blog posts on every (suburban) railway station in Melbourne that’s ever been my usual. Of course it more-or-less tracks the places I’ve lived, and I’ve touched on some of this stuff in Commutes of my Youth. (Dates may not be exact.) St Kilda, 1970-71 When I was a baby, my ... [More]
Speaking of City Loop safety issues, is this what’s keeping the signalling system working? Bits of sticky tape and wire? Hopefully this is just something temporary. (Pic snapped this morning thanks to a stop-start trip from Richmond to Flinders Street)
One of the persistent myths is that in the “good old days”, before trains and trams had locked doors, nobody ever fell out. When the old VR ran the suburban network trains, and stations were manned and had barrier gates, trains had a lot of doors and it was never a problem. Nobody fell out ... [More]
Today’s Herald Sun raises an issue that has been pondered for some time: 9 carriage trains to relieve overcrowding. This would seem like a good opportunity to dig out my Bargearse remake video. The reasoning behind adding carriages is that it’s close to becoming impractical to add more trains in peak onto the busiest lines, ... [More]
I’ve already posted about the mess that may ensue if once Myki is fully rolled-out, there is no option of a single-use ticket. Today it’s been confirmed flagged as probable that some 50 million of the unused Short Term Tickets will be pulped, and also that almost 500 vending machines originally intended for trams are ... [More]
As Gordon Price says: My travel time is far too valuable to waste actually driving.
(Probably my favourite lightbulb joke when they were all the rage was: Q. How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb? A. Two. One to hold the giraffe and the other to fill the bathtub with brightly coloured machine tools.)
This is a Short Term Ticket. Part of the Myki system, they are available in regional cities using Myki, for two-hour or daily fares, for people who don’t have a reusable Myki smartcard. Something that was missed in the announcement last month was that it’s not just trams where you won’t be able to buy ... [More]