For the past decade, passengers waiting on platform 3 at Melbourne Central station have been greeted by two increasingly dated billboards.
The first was was ‘Pipeworks Fun Market’, located in the northern suburb of Campbellfield.
The second was a Metcard branded ‘Concession travel is only for concession card holders’ poster, featuring a Hitachi train still in the green and gold The Met livery.
Both advertisers sure received value for money from their marketing budget, with the pair of billboards both outlasting their owners – Metcard was replaced by Myki in December 2012, and the Pipeworks Market closed for good in the same month.
The end finally came in early March 2014 during maintenance work in the City Loop, with the two billboards being removed.
Three empty wall panels mark where ‘Pipeworks Fun Market’ used to tout for customers.
And just a dirty smear indicates where the massive Metcard billboard used to hang.
By the time the Metcard advertisement was removed, the middle-aged man using an ill-gotten concession ticket was probably old enough to legitimately hold a Seniors Card!
Wasn’t there another Pipeworks ad on Platform 1 of Melbourne Central? What happened to that (if it isn’t still there?)
Pretty sure platform one’s poster for fun works was up on Friday.
I cannot believe a major station in a major city would have a couple of billboards sitting there for over decade and nobody bothered to take them down. It annoyed me every day lol.
It’s shocking how poorly maintained these loop stations are, I think 90% of the lights running along the blue strip at Melbourne Central are dead. How hard is it to change a light bulb?
Also, it’s interesting to see Melbourne Central Station in a different font behind where the billboard was too.
You’re spot on about the huge number of defective florescent tubes along the tunnel wall:
I’ve got a feeling that the billboards and defective lights have sat there unloved because of the difficulty in accessing them – an full track occupation needs to be put into place so trains don’t plow into whoever is doing the work.
As for the different fonts, the one behind the billboard was the same serif font that was used by ‘The Met’ during the 1990s – the sans-serif font was brought in by Metlink.
There are dozens of billboards on pretty much every underground station in Sydney, e.g. Wynyard and Town Hall and they manage to change them every few weeks. So it’s laughable that Melbourne couldn’t change a single billboard in so long, ditto with the lights.
Even ‘minor’ underground stations in Sydney like Edgecliff have billboards:
As you say – something strange is happening down here!
[…] seems like the out of date billboards are the least of the problems Metro Trains has to deal with at Melbourne […]