Friday 9 May 2014

Railway Archaeology: Ballarat Heritage Weekend

This weekend (May 10th and 11th) is Ballarat Heritage Weekend. One of the many events planned for the weekend is the steam train shuttles between the historic Ballarat Station and Lal Lal, on the line to Geelong. The trains will be run by Steamrail Victoria, a preservation group, and will run with one locomotive at each end, with restored carriages in the middle.
Y112 in 2013

Thursday 8 May 2014

The Misguided Metro Rail Capacity Project

Seemingly willing to promise almost anything to win Public Transport points after sticking too stubbornly to the unpopular East-West Link, the Coalition have been announcing as many rail projects as they possibly can. Some of these are just re-announcing things that were already going to happen, like the delivery of individual trains. Some are projects the government has been promising for years without actually making progress on, like Airport Rail. Some of them are fantastically worthwhile projects I am very glad the government is doing, like the St Albans Grade Separation or the Mildura line Standardisation (more on which soon). And some...well, some are just desperate.