Our forebears built and paid for this wonderful railway heritage and handed it on to us ; we couldn’t even maintain it and keep it going. No wonder our manufacturing base has nearly disappeared.
it isn't just RAIL history. If you remember the old Heathcote road it was a sawtooth roller coaster ride. With modern earth moving equipment it is now just another guided missileway. Which encourages commuter traffic from Pyalong and beyond but it also destroys the pleasure of the drive itself. Another loss for the purpose of progress.
based on my own personal experience of attempting to derail a train using coins, sometimes the coins fell off the track(my dad, a train driver, showed me the trick). were those people at 5:18 attempting to derail the train with coins and collect the remains as souvenirs of the occasion?
Probably. We used to double the size of pennys like that and half pennys after such processing came out nearly the size of pennys. Trouble was that this process made them too thin and the queen's head was flattened beyond recognition.
It’s strange how the government has closed down so many branch lines as being uneconomic I scrapped steam for diesel for economic and progressive reasons And yet we constantly change diesel locomotives for newer types same for the electric trains around Melbourne But we are still losing money with every train that runs. Should all track be torn up except for tracks to other capital cities and major country centres. When will we make a profit???
The last year VR made a profit was about 1923. You can imagine that, at that time, the competition from road transport was in it's infancy: dirt roads, hand-crank start vehicles, unreliability etc. Oher factors too, such as changes to the ratio of funding for road verses rail. It would be impossible to make a profit in the current circumstances. With all the branch lines closed - no opportunity exists to earn any income at all from where the branch line served. Rail is provided as a social service, and everyone that uses it, keeps a vehicle off the road. In your second last sentence, in fact almost all the track, except to major towns and cities has been torn up. VR track mileage peaked at about 1942. Some services have been restored, but even that has been inadequate. Sale to Bairnsdale is a good example. The 1880's timber and iron bridge over the Avon river is still in use - with a crawling speed limit. It should have been replaced by now with a low maintenance concrete bridge designed for the main line speed.
I think the pollies in the late ‘70s would have preferred to do away with rail altogether and was reflected in the Lonie Report. However the pollies realized it would be political suicide to remove all country services except Geelong and the electified services. I’m not sure when the pollies realized that rail mode should be retained even if it need government support to keep running. But in the mid-seventies, road transport was heavily promoted as modern. Especially when old clapped out rail motors were replaced by air conditioned buses. And many outer suburban services such as Seymour and Bacchus Marsh were still running wooden carriages and no heating. Decades of neglect made it easy to condemn a run down system. I recently looked up a book of pictures of station buildings in the mid-seventies and I was surprised at how delapidated they were.
Our forebears built and paid for this wonderful railway heritage and handed it on to us ; we couldn’t even maintain it and keep it going. No wonder our manufacturing base has nearly disappeared.
I was on this trip although I couldn't see myself in this film.
These old 8mm movies are a reminder of just how much we have lost in rail history, all due to so called progress.
I must be getting old I was on that train it was a great trip.
Not old , just mature aged. lol. I was also on this trip. Coming up 50 years this November.
it isn't just RAIL history. If you remember the old Heathcote road it was a sawtooth roller coaster ride. With modern earth moving equipment it is now just another guided missileway. Which encourages commuter traffic from Pyalong and beyond but it also destroys the pleasure of the drive itself. Another loss for the purpose of progress.
So the Heathcote line branched off at Heathcote Junction, is that correct?
Yes
based on my own personal experience of attempting to derail a train using coins, sometimes the coins fell off the track(my dad, a train driver, showed me the trick). were those people at 5:18 attempting to derail the train with coins and collect the remains as souvenirs of the occasion?
Probably. We used to double the size of pennys like that and half pennys after such processing came out nearly the size of pennys. Trouble was that this process made them too thin and the queen's head was flattened beyond recognition.
Can i use your footage for a video I'm working on?
It’s strange how the government has closed down so many branch lines as being uneconomic I scrapped steam for diesel for economic and progressive reasons And yet we constantly change diesel locomotives for newer types same for the electric trains around Melbourne But we are still losing money with every train that runs. Should all track be torn up except for tracks to other capital cities and major country centres. When will we make a profit???
The last year VR made a profit was about 1923. You can imagine that, at that time, the competition from road transport was in it's infancy: dirt roads, hand-crank start vehicles, unreliability etc. Oher factors too, such as changes to the ratio of funding for road verses rail. It would be impossible to make a profit in the current circumstances. With all the branch lines closed - no opportunity exists to earn any income at all from where the branch line served. Rail is provided as a social service, and everyone that uses it, keeps a vehicle off the road. In your second last sentence, in fact almost all the track, except to major towns and cities has been torn up. VR track mileage peaked at about 1942.
Some services have been restored, but even that has been inadequate. Sale to Bairnsdale is a good example. The 1880's timber and iron bridge over the Avon river is still in use - with a crawling speed limit. It should have been replaced by now with a low maintenance concrete bridge designed for the main line speed.
I think the pollies in the late ‘70s would have preferred to do away with rail altogether and was reflected in the Lonie Report.
However the pollies realized it would be political suicide to remove all country services except Geelong and the electified services.
I’m not sure when the pollies realized that rail mode should be retained even if it need government support to keep running. But in the mid-seventies, road transport was heavily promoted as modern. Especially when old clapped out rail motors were replaced by air conditioned buses. And many outer suburban services such as Seymour and Bacchus Marsh were still running wooden carriages and no heating.
Decades of neglect made it easy to condemn a run down system.
I recently looked up a book of pictures of station buildings in the mid-seventies and I was surprised at how delapidated they were.