Archive for October, 2015

Photographing every railway station in Melbourne

Melbourne has around two hundred railway stations across the city, but for someone such as myself, taking a photo at each one should be easy enough to achieve. However I sat down the other week, and came to the realisation that after 10 years and over 35,000 photographs catalogued online, it is something I am yet to accomplish. So how many stations have I photographed so far?

‘All change’ with the V/Line nanny state

Over the years I’ve noticed that V/Line manages to screw up in ways that no other rail operator in the world can, and the other month at Geelong I encountered yet another blunder from them – an entire trainload of passengers being forced to abandon their train at Geelong station, just so that an extra carriage could be added to it.

VLocity VL14 and classmate about to depart Geelong on the down

The trams that Melbourne rejected

Buying a new tram for Melbourne isn’t like buying a new car – they cost a few million dollars each, and even if you had that much money ready to spend, one can’t exactly head down to your local dealer and pick one up off the shelf. Instead, the purchase of new trams involve long and convoluted tender processes, and lots of due diligence – a process that has occasionally seen trams from other cities operate in Melbourne.

W8.959 westbound outside Flinders Street Station

Railway shops at Nicholson Street, Footscray

Once upon a time on Nicholson Street in Footscray there where two rows of ordinary looking shops – but when you took a look at the back wall, you realised that they were actually built over the top of the railway line. So what was the story behind them?

Eastern side of the shops over the railway tracks at Nicholson Street

Six minutes at Ikea – a shopping speedrun

The other night I came to a dual realisation – my wife was in need of a comfortable chair for breastfeeding, and speciality nursery furniture is ridiculously expensive. The solution to both problems was a trip to Ikea – better known as a store that will leave you dazed, confused and wondering where your Saturday […]