[OT] Marvellous Melbourne (was Re: Railway Architecture)

On Mar 28, 6:18 am, Ian Jelf <i...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Were there double deckers (ie RMCs or RCLs) on the route?   One of my
regrets in life is having discovered London too late to have travelled
on double decker Routemasters.

And i left the UK too early to travel on any Routemasters. The Epping
buses looked more like RTLs!

I went **twelve miles** from suburban
Birmingham to the heart of the "Black Country" to study and thought
people were speaking a different language!

My partner -- originally from the S. Yorks coalfield -- insists on
rhyming "nowt" with "stout" instead of "coat" but we get by somehow,
occasionally resorting to sign language ...

I remember cycling around the Rodings being a very pleasant trip in
the days before Essex Man and four-wheel drives. Perhaps it still is?

It's a very pleasant area, The Rodings, yes.   I've not cycled around it
but it's a very quiet corner of the Underground network indeed.

Hatfield Broad Oak I remember ... rather a splendid medieval church,
originally the chancel of an abbey which lost its nave at the
reformation. Some brasses and I think a tomb or two. Very old cottages
and a green.


By 1962 I'd been in Melbourne for nearly 12 months, riding the trams

Now you're seriously making me jealous.   I've been to Melbourne twice
and loved (and I mean really loved) the place.   Unfortunately my first
visit was in 2001, though.  

A very different place from 1962 when the only sign of life in the CBD
on Sunday afternoons was the Rev. Sir Irving Benson's Pleasant Sunday
Afternoon at Wesley Church ...

I would dearly have loved to look down
Swanston Street and to have seen end to end with W class cars.

Each with its own driver and conductor. Nothing so promiscuous as
multiple unit coupling :-)

Chapel Street and the City Circle have had to suffice, though.

Try the light rail down to Port Melbourne -- a converted heavy rail
line.

We're still planning our next trip, which will ideally
include the Indian Pacific across from Perth.   And yes, I realise that
goes to the Other Big City but we can't come to Oz without going to
Melbourne, so arrangements will have to be made.)

Tha can save thasen some brass if you book Virgin Blue a week or so in
advance, and use Wotif to book accommodation. We've had some great
long weekends in Melbourne quite cheaply that way. And yes, I do find
it a more pleasant place to visit than Sydney these days. If you ever
get a chance, see if you can get from Sydney to the Lithgow "zig-zag",
a monument to the perseverance of Australia's 19th century civil
engineers. They had to take the railway up through the Great Dividing
Range to get into the interior, through largely unsurveyed country,
and the Lithgow zig-zag was one of two they originally built to do it.
Avoiding the zig-zag took a deviation with ten tunnels ...

to school and occasionally taking a red Tait train -- some of it
converted pre WW1 steam stock -- or a blue Harris train at weekends.

When they wrote "Victorian Railways" on the side of the stock, they
weren't kidding, were they!?

There was a Victorian Symphony Orchestra at one time, a name also
suggesting mutton-chop whiskers and watchchains with fobs, but it
changed its name to the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Dame Edna has
made a recording of "Peter and the Wolf" with it.

Melbourne did carry out its suburban electrification quickly and
effectively, way ahead of most cities at the time (ca 1919).

Any rooard up, the reuse of old wooden steam commuter stock was
typical of the thrifty approach enjoined on Australia's state-owned
railways by their parliamentary masters. "Rebuilding" came from
revenue, while new construction required legislation, so there was a
good deal of recycling going on. After the Sydney electrification NSW
converted a lot of its Bayer Pea*** 4-6-4Ts to 4-6-0 tender engines,
and these rattled around the state's branchlines until the end of
steam. Even more extraordinary was the conversion of half-a-dozen old
Bayer Pea*** 4-4-0s into 4-4-2Ts for use on the state's short
"tramlines" including the Yass Town branch about 50km from here.

I suppose Australia's geography, more than things like the gauge
"problem" put paid to mass long distance travel.

A lot of Australia's railways were built as "development lines", often
to please the electors of the State MPs who proposed them. Some
serious pork-barrelling used to go on, of the "you vote for my line
and I'll vote for yours" variety. Lines were built that were never
opened, others never saw more than a weekly or even fortnightly mixed,
despite their parliamentary promoters dreams of flourishing new
country towns and thriving family farms. To save money, lines were
built without ballast and (e.g.) 40lb rail, which fatally reduced line
capacity (has anyone thought of rebuilding the Oxford-Cambridge line
to these specifications?). Sealed roads and cheap cars eventually saw
the end of these lines, although many stayed open, ironically, because
instead of promoting rural industries, they proved to be themselves
the main rural industry and source of employment in many a country
town.

Meanwhile, the main interstate lines are caught between the private
car (much cheaper and faster) and the airlines (much faster and a lot
cheaper if you get the discount fares). When the Hume Highway was
sealed all the way from Sydney to Melbourne, it was the beginning of
the end of the named overnight trains: once the four-lane highway was
opened, that was it. The lines themselves were not built for speed --
freight was always a priority -- and so even now, the railways will
get you from Canberra to Melbourne by road coach from Canberra as far
as Cootamundra or Albury, to avoid the steepish gradients and reverse
curves west of Goulburn.

A little belatedly, the railways did try to rationalise their
networks and concentrate on "freight centres" but as is usually the
case, customers found that it was quicker and cheaper to leave their
consignments on the truck and bypass rail altogether.

To be fair, though, the Metropolitan networks are comprehensive and
popular, at least in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.  

The real miracle is Perth, where in the 1970s they were seriously
considering closing down their suburban lines. These days they're
electrified, they're busy and at least one new line is under
construction. Hobart really was a terminal case, and its narrow gauge
diesel commuter railcars ceased to run in the 1970s.

(I was less
impressed by the Adelaide network and indeed by Adelaide's public
transport in general.   They all seem "intermodally disjointed" -
ghastly phrase! - when compared to Melbourne, though.)

Melbourne kept its trams. Sydney didn't and has suffered the
consequences. Ironically, for a State which has had an Australian
Labor Party government more often than not, it's the blue-collar
Western Suburbs which are the biggest transport headache. The
vehicular traffic just doesn't stop, 24/7. The latest plan is to build
a Lille-type automatic Metro out into this area, but the present State
government is so discredited, people are not sure whether to take this
seriously.


Actually Accles & Pollock.   They;re still in business, in Oldbury,
about 5Km from where I sit typing these words at the moment!

Hooray! Some things never change ...

Canberra
on the end of a branchline off a branchline ...

Surely the only Capital City in the world on a branch line?!

It even has a summer and a winter timetable. Basically, the trains are
run as a social service as much as anything else (cf Amtrak).

(Despite always wanting to go there, I've *still* not managed it.   I
had to contend with looking at the outline of the City from a Melbourne
- Sydney flight. Mind you, I've spent today in the deliberately planned
Garden City of Letchworth in Hertfordshire, which I would imagine is a
sort of Home Counties equivalent.   Next time.......)

I only remember Welwyn Garden City because that's where Welgar
Shredded Wheat was made, and there was a picture of the factory on the
packet ...

I hope you do make it to Canberra some day. Remember to come in Autumn
or Spring or you'll either fry or freeze here. Take a lunch cruise on
the lake, visit the National Gallery, the Australian Museum and in
particular the Australian War Memorial, a cross between the Imperial
War Museum and the Cenotaph. But don't go train-spotting ...

Very best wishes from

Andrew Clarke
Canberra, sithee.


Ian Jelf, MITG
Birmingham, UK

Registered Blue Badge Tourist Guide for London and the Heart of Englandhttp://www.bluebadge.demon.co.uk

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