Waking up in Geelong

Another instalment in my photos from ten years ago series – this time it is June 2007.

We start this month with the 150th anniversary of the opening of the Geelong & Melbourne Railway on 25 June 1857. A series of displays and special trains ran to mark the event.

Steam locomotive R761 led the special train to Geelong, with a pair of tiger moths giving chase.

Also at home in Geelong, I photographed a green and white liveried Benders bus.

The ‘Benders’ name was dropped in 2014 by parent company ComfortDelGro Cabcharge Victoria, who adopted the simpler ‘CDC Geelong’ name. The colour scheme has also bitten the dust, replaced by either PTV orange, or all over advertising.

An ongoing theme in this series is the Waurn Ponds cement train – this time around I headed out to Ghazeepore Road to capture a return working.

The carriage of cement by rail in Victoria was abandoned altogether in December 2015, and the scene pictured has drastically changed: Anglesea Road now crosses the tracks via an overpass, along with the recently built Baanip Boulevard.

Over in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, I photographed a 3-car Comeng train shunting into Siding ‘A’ at Camberwell, in between running the off-peak shuttle service to Alamein.

These shuttles still run today, but thanks to the growth of the Melbourne train fleet, are now run by the newer X’Trapolis trains.

I also found an even older train – Hitachi 184M still with a ‘The Met’ logo from the 1990s.

These logos were eventually removed in late 2007, as Connex started refurbishing the remaining seven Hitachi trains in their fleet.

While something much newer was the completed station at Southern Cross.

Note how open the station concourse used to be – since bastardised with the addition of numerous retail outlets, and hemmed in by ticket gates and fences.

Another significant change to the station can be seen on the western wall facing Wurundjeri Way.

Platform 15 and 16 have since been added to the ground level, and two new office towers have been built atop the concrete deck: 664 Collins Street and 699 Bourke Street.

And we end on a common theme: Myki screwups, this time the Myki Discovery Centre at Southern Cross.

Open to the elements, the freezing conditions inside soon led to the staff walking out, forcing the installation of glass doors and a climate control system.

If only fixing the rest of the Myki flaws was so simple.

Footnote

Here you can find the rest of my ‘photos from ten years ago‘ series.

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