As usual we start down at Geelong, were I paid a visit to the future Geelong Ring Road interchange at Waurn Ponds.
This interchange opened in June 2009 as the terminus of stage 3, with the freeway extended south towards Colac in 2011.
I also headed south-west from Geelong to Warrnambool, on the trail of the final El Zorro operated container serivce.
The line from Geelong to Warrnambool is single track, with the only place available for opposing trains to pass being Camperdown.
Freight trains still run on the line today, but the loop at Warncoort provides another place for trains to pass.
While at Warrnambool I followed the remains of the Port Fairy railway.
The Port Fairy line closed in 1977, but the section to Dennington remained open until 2002, to permit the delivery of briquettes to the neighbouring Nestle factory.
I also drove west of Geelong, chasing a ballast train at work on the main Melbourne-Adelaide railway.
Another long drive took me north to Wycheproof, where the railway runs down the middle of the main street.
Steamrail Victoria had ran a special train up to Wycheproof for the weekend.
A group of mates came along for the chase.
And every time we got ahead of the train, we’d pull over to take a photo of it.
At North Geelong I was lucky enough to catch track inspection vehicle EM100 head past on another tour of the network.
Back in 2008 two carriage trains on the Geelong line were a common sight.
But platform extension works were underway – this is Marshall station.
And the city end of North Melbourne platform 5 and 6.
The work was to allow the operation of 7-car VLocity trains in peak times, which commenced in November 2008 and continued operating until June 2015, when the expansion of 2-car VLocity sets to 3-cars made such an arrangement impossible.
Upgrades to North Melbourne station were also continuing.
With the escalators between platform and concourse now in place.
But the concourse made no difference to trains stuck on increasingly congested tracks.
It took until 2015 for V/Line trains to be separated from suburban trains at North Melbourne, with the opening of the first stage of Regional Rail Link.
But passengers on the Hurstbridge line were seeing one of their bottlenecks removed.
With work on a $52 million project to duplicate 750m of single track between Clifton Hill and Westgarth station underway, featuring a new bridge over the Merri Creek.
Running beneath the West Gate Bridge, it once linked the port to the rest of Victoria.
But now lays idle.
The last train used the line in 1992, with the city end dismantled in the 1990s to make way for the Melbourne Docklands development. There have been various proposals to reopen the line to transport freight to Webb Dock, reducing the number of trucks on the road, but they have come to nought.
This is the story of the boom gate that once protected the Furlong Road level crossing on the Sunbury line, and the adventures it has had since it was made redundant by grade separation.
The boom gate was there to prevent motorists from driving into the level crossing – but motorists still ended up on the tracks, with fatal consequences.
In April 2014 funding was approved to remove the nearby Main Road crossing in St Albans, with Furlong Road being added to the project in June 2015.
By 2016 work was well underway at Furlong Road, with a deep trench being dug to carry trains railway beneath the road.
Trains on the Sunbury line were shut down during October 2016 to allow the new tracks to be connected, with the Level Crossing Removal Authority being there to photograph the removal of the now-redundant boom gates.
But the five minutes of fame for the boom gate soon ended – a week later it was sitting forgotten on the concourse at Ginifer station.
You might think the story ended there, but in March 2017 I found the ‘Furlong Road’ boom again – dumped in a locked compound.
Located 30 kilometres away in Blackburn!
But even that wasn’t the final chapter – in September 2018 we met again, at the Metro Trains signal depot at Sunshine.
And there it will presumably remain, the only chance of a second life requiring the destruction of a fellow boom gate at the hands of an oblivious motorist.
So the obvious question – why Blackburn?
“Why did the boom gate end up on the opposite side of Melbourne in Blackburn” I hear you ask.
Alliance Partners:
CPB Contractors, Aurecon, Arcadis, VicRoads, Public Transport Victoria and Metro Trains Melbourne
Cost:
$736 million
Over the next eight years, the Level Crossing Removal Authority will oversee the removal of 50 dangerous and congested level crossings across Melbourne, including level crossings at Furlong Road and Main Road in St Albans, Blackburn Road in Blackburn and Heatherdale Road in Mitcham.
With four geographically dispersed level crossing removals delivered by one project team, presumably once the works at Furlong Road were completed the celebrity boom gate was relocated to their site compound at Blackburn, pending a return to the Metro Trains Melbourne spare parts pool with the completion of the project as a whole.
And a footnote on language
“Boom barrier” is the official name for the devices used to indicate to motorists that a level crossing is closed, but for some reason the term “boom gate” has captured the public imagination, despite them having zero resemblance to an actual gate, so I’ve done the same here.
It’s AFL Grand Final week so what better time to take a look at the planning behind the special trains that transport fans to and from games.
Throughout the AFL season V/Line runs additional trains between Geelong and Melbourne, transporting Cats fans to Etihad Stadium and the MCG.
Geelong made it into both the 2009 AFL Grand Final, so for the occasion V/Line added a special ‘Geelong Cats’ headboard to the front of some trains.
V/Line also timetabled trains direct to Richmond for easy access to the MCG, and the reverse after the game. These operational changes required 20 pages of special instructions for railway staff, detailing the timetable of each of the additional trains, and the rolling stock reallocations required to free up the trains that would be used.
They also included a special instruction tailored to Geelong supporters, known for walking out at three quarter time if their team is losing – trains depart early if the Cats are down.
Are there any other teams where the supporters beat the traffic by walking out?
A footnote on football crowds
The MCG is served by Richmond and Jolimont stations but crowding is a problem – as Daniel Bowen explains.
Olympic Park station is located on a single track balloon loop spur line, but features two tracks and four platform faces.
Ordinarily, the centre island platform is used for both boarding and alighting, but this changes when the station is operating in major event mode. In this mode, the centre island platform is used by alighting passengers and the two side platforms are brought into use for boarding passengers.
But the brand new Perth Stadium shows what how it is done.
With six platform faces across three island platforms, departing passengers are segregated by destination, and two stabling yards are located nearby, allowing up to 23 six-car trains to hit the tracks as soon as patrons start to walk out of the ground.
It seems that every month sees me start in Geelong, where this time around I photographed a boring blue bus at Geelong station.
The ‘GTS’ stood for Geelong Transit System and was the operating brand for public transport in Geelong between 1983 until 2000, when it was replaced by a mishmash of bus operator branding. Today no sign of it remains, Myki being the ticketing system, and the Public Transport Victoria livery has been applied to buses.
I also took at look at progress on the Geelong Ring Road through the Barrabool Hills.
Barrabool Road had been slewed to one side, allowing construction of the bridge over the future freeway to be carried out without interference with traffic.
Excavation work on the long cutting towards Waurn Ponds was well underway.
As was the massive climb uphill from the Barwon River.
Another ongoing theme is the decline of rail freight – I found a rake of redundant superphosphate hopper wagons in storage at North Geelong Yard.
As well as a rake of much older cement hoppers.
Both were destined for the scrap yard – the superphosphate traffic was completely lost to rail in the early 2000s, but cement traffic was still barley holding on but in smaller volumes, hence the retirement of older wagons.
But there was one new traffic that rail won – the transport of containerised mineral sands from the Iluka Resources processing plant outside Hamilton to the Port of Melbourne for export.
And another success was the transport of Geelong football fans to Melbourne, where they would see the Cats get thrashed by Hawthorn in the 2008 AFL Grand Final.
A number of special 8 car trains ran between Geelong and Richmond during the finals seasons, with one of the trains on grand final day wearing a special ‘Geelong Cats’ headboard on the lead locomotive.
Up in Melbourne I took a walk through Flinders Street Station, where Connex had opened a new customer information booth on the main concourse.
The booth still exists today, just rebranded for Metro Trains Melbourne.
I also photographed the ‘split flap’ Solari boards hidden on the main concourse, which once listed train departures for each line.
Over at Southern Cross Station I followed a speedy piece of construction – a new loading ramp at the north end of platform 1.
Built to enable the provision of motorail services on The Overland between Melbourne and Adelaide, two weeks later it was virtually complete.
The first cars were loaded onto The Overland in February 2009, but today the ramp stands unused – the motorail service was withdrawn in November 2015.
Finally, we end this month with a trip to Ballarat.
In the small township of Millbrook I came across a level crossing on Old Melbourne Road, protected by bells and lights but no boom barriers.
VicTrack funded a upgrade of this level crossing during the 2012/13 financial year, but the railway line is due to be closed in a year or two time, made redundant by the Ballarat Line Upgrade.
On the shores of Lake Wendouree is the Ballarat Tramway Museum, where I photographed tram 33 departing the St Aidans Drive terminus.
While a short distance away I paid a visit to the future Wendouree station site.
The railway past the station was still being used by trains to Ararat, so the tracks were slewed away from the platform, allowing construction to be completed without delaying V/Line services.
I also had a look at the Alstom workshops at North Ballarat, where the sidings were full of abandoned trains.
I found Comeng carriages 1109T and 533M showing plenty of accident damage; as well as classmate 671M stored in a stripped condition, minus windows, doors, cab front and who knows what else.
If you want to see how likely it is that Melbourne Airport will see a rail link built, just take a look at the recent business decisions made by SkyBus – the operator of the only public transport link between it and the Melbourne CBD.
The history of Melbourne’s SkyBus
SkyBus commenced operations in 1978, running a shuttle service between Tullamarine Airport and Franklin Street on the northern edge of the Melbourne CBD. In 1982 it took over the airport bus services run by the now-defunct airlines Ansett and TAA, with the service taking the current form in 2000 when the city terminus was moved to Spencer Street Station, with services operating express to the airport. 2002 then saw the state government contributing $3 million in funding to upgrade the service in place of the construction of an airport rail link.
Articulated buses were introduced to the service in 2002.
With the first Bustech “CDi” double deck buses entering service in 2015.
It appears that the new management realised that their gravy train of monopoly profits on the Melbourne Airport – City route wouldn’t last forever, as they soon started acquiring other airport bus operators across Melbourne, Australia, and even New Zealand.
Skybus launched two new airport bus services: Melbourne Airport to Tarneit and Werribee; and Melbourne Airport to the Mornington Peninsula via Rosebud, Mordialloc and Mentone.
The reality is, just because you build an airport rail, it doesn’t mean people want to use it.
Yes, let’s plan for the next 15 or 30 years, but let’s also be somewhat sensible in this conversation by recognising we’ve had a service for over 38 years, which over 50 million passengers have used. We think we can co-exist with rail and provide a very competitive offering.
If we ever have an airport rail, it has to deliver all those value points for customer experience. Melbourne Airport warrants and deserves many modes supplying the highest level of customer experience, and we think SkyBus will be one of those.
But by 2018 they were more worried, questioning the government for choosing to subsidise a competing rail link.
“SkyBus welcomes any compelling mass transit rail option that can compete with our services, but surely there are important questions about at what cost the Victorian taxpayer will be asked to contribute both the build of this and the ongoing operations, let alone the fare price a $10-15 billion investment requires for a return to its investors,” added Mr Sewards.
But experience at overseas airports shows that SkyBus will survive – many passengers will still choose an airport bus over an airport train, with one example being Hong Kong.
In general, public transport modes dominate HKIA ground access market. Franchised buses have a large proportion (47 percent) with the Airport Express rail line (AEL) having 23 percent. The primary reason attracting air passengers to use the franchised buses is the lower travel cost. ‘Shortest time required’ is the main reason for those who used AEL.
Research there showed that directness of service was the reason for mode choice:
In order to understand the motivation for mode choice – and to explore the attribute of directness of service — MTR managers undertook some market research. Of those riders on the direct bus routes, an expected 55 percent said that the lower fare was a reason for choosing the bus; importantly, 51 percent stated that directness of service (i.e., no need to transfer) was a reason for their choice of mode. Directness of service was considered a factor by only 18 percent of rail riders, presumably those with destinations convenient to the terminals.
And that even throwing money at a gold plated rail service will do little to attract additional passengers.
It is apparent that even with a good design and well-integrated railway service, the Airport Express does not have inherent advantages over more direct single mode bus travel. In other words, the speed advantage of rail versus single mode road competitors when travelling over distances of only up to 34 km [21 mi] do not result in significant enough time savings to compensate for the necessary transfer.
Which also provides lessons for the State Government on how to deliver a Melbourne Airport rail link.
So what will Melbourne Airport rail do to SkyBus?
2018 saw the the signing of a new 10 year contract between SkyBus and the State Government, so it doesn’t look like SkyBus is intending to go anywhere.
I suspect that the Hong Kong experience will also play out in Melbourne – patronage on SkyBus’ primary Melbourne Airport to CBD route will plummet, with passengers switching to rail based on cost if it is a extension of existing suburban services, or quality if it is built as an express airport link.
As for the other SkyBus routes recently launched to other parts of Melbourne, patronage will stay much the same, with the one seat journey being preferred over a change trains in the city. However the real competition will be driving directly from home to the airport, over a freeway network that the State Government continues to expand.
There are also a other privately operated bus services that run from Melbourne Airport towards Dandenong and Ringwood, as well further afield to Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo, Gippsland and Shepparton.
More photos
Until the early-2000s SkyBus used full sized coaches for the trip out to the airport – ‘The Tulla Flyer’ has posted a selection of photos from this period on the Australian Transport Discussion Board.
