Out and about

Last week I had a day off work and while I was out and about doing un-work like things I happened to see Bumblebee 1. Bumblebee 1 is one of the 5 tram's that Yarra Trams has borrowed from it's sister company in Mulhouse, France. These 5 trams are Citadis trams like those already used in Melbourne, the main difference being that they are longer (5 segments as opposed to 3), have styling differences, and not to mention they are very VERY yellow. I think they look great, that yellow really stands out from the grey of Melbourne in winter, and the other grey trams. Two thumbs down to Yarra Trams for painting all the trams grey and white, one thumb up for sticking with the yellow on the borrowed trams.

Bumblebee 1 turning into Bourke Street from Spencer Street

After I had finished my business in town I had a few hours to kill so I decided to go for a train ride somewhere. That somewhere turned out to be Sunbury, so I boarded the 1515 service to Echuca. What impressed me was the utilisation of the rolling stock. It was a six car V/locity with three 2 car trains. At Sunbury the 2 rear carriages were dropped off, and a further 2 were to be dropped off at Bendigo, with the remaining 2 cars continuing on to Echuca. At each of the intermediate stations the cars that were dropped off were to form return services to Melbourne. Passengers were advised of which cars to travel in to reach their destination in numerous announcements throughout the journey. To me this seems like a brilliant use of rolling stock.

VLocities at Sunbury.

When I alighted at Sunbury I noticed that there were a large number of people standing in the aisles of the first 4 cars. There was another VLocitity waiting in the siding at the end of the platform that I gather was dropped off the previous Bendigo train. After waiting for a few minutes the Bendigo and Echuca portions continued on, and the two remaining sets coupled to form the return to Melbourne. Soon enough I was on my way in a very sparsely occupied 4 car set. In all there were probably about 5 people in the 2 car set I was in. On arrival back at Southern Cross this train formed a Traralgon service and there were many passengers waiting.

I guess my point is that I like the idea of using and dividing/joining multiple units to make the best use of rolling stock. While the return to Melbourne was void of passengers it was immediately used for a service to somewhere else where there was demand. Two thumbs up to V/Line.

Impressions of Eastlink

So on Sunday I went for a cruise down Eastlink to see what the fuss was about. The trouble was there were a lot of other insane people doing the same thing. There was a traffic jam just before the tunnel entrance (in both directions). I'm not sure what caused it, I suspect there was some sort of wave effect going on.

The verdict?

It's quick. Starting from the Eastern Freeway it gets you to the Frankston traffic jam way faster than taking Springvale Rd. All up it took us about 25-30 minutes end to end, and a total travel time of about 1.5 hrs Mornington to Greensborough (that includes 20-30 minutes stuck in the Frankston traffic jam).

One thing that I noticed is a weird resonance in the road that causes subtle vibrations that make your voice go wobbly if you go "ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh". Probably a conspiracy with suspension/tyre manufacturers and fitters and or orthopaedic surgeons to increase business.

On the environmental front I noticed there was much landscaping involved, with several wetlands located along side the road and the Dandenong Creek. No doubt these were put in place to soak up any pollutants seeping into nearby waterways. As for noise pollution, they have installed noise barriers along much of the length of the road. These aren't your normal everyday concrete "stone henge gone mad" noise barriers. These are of the bright and colourful left overs from the 70s, see-through orange and green noise barriers. I'm sure some residents of Dandenong North now enjoy some of the most beautiful green sunsets you can see on earth.

Overall, I think if it is your business to drive around, then the $5ish one way toll would be worth it, both in time and fuel savings ... For now.

That said, I don't support the building of more motorways (free or toll) the money could have been better spent upgrading Melbourne's public transport network. Supposedly there is space in the median reserved for heavy and light rail, I won't be holding my breath. I also believe that room was reserved in all the entrance/exit ramps for bus stops, again, keep breathing. The bicycle path alongside is a token gesture.

Q. When is a toll road not a toll road?

A. When you ride a motorcycle apparently

I find it hard to swallow that today a large group of motorcycles is travelling along Eastlink in protest of the tolls for motorcycle use of the road. What don't they understand about the term toll road? Although they take up less road space than a car or truck they are still using the road, and should still pay to use the road.

This from a group that already gets free parking, and is largely immune to road congestion anyway.

Ebay Annoyances

I buy stuff on ebay occasionally. My annoyance is not with ebay itself but rather with people who I shall call micro-bidders. Micro-bidders are those people who make bids on items that are only a few dollars above the current winning bid. I have to admit that this is what I did when I first used ebay. Micro-bidding is time consuming and I believe it inflates the price of the item too high, mostly through petty bidding wars that develop from a win at any cost attitude. Great if you are selling, but annoying to other bidders.

Fortunately, as I'm sure most people realise, ebay will bid on your behalf. All you need to do is pick a price and as other bidders make bids under your maximum bid ebay will automatically bid for you. Once the maximum bidding goes above your maximum bid you are out of the race. If you wish to go on, enter a new bid, otherwise give up. Ebay has made the function available, use it.

To get the most out of this function you should do your homework first to see what similar items are going for and use that as your benchmark (indeed shop around elsewhere as sometimes the prices people pay on ebay are too high). When the item comes up again, bid early and make it your maximum bid. If I'm a bit desperate I will add a bit to my maximum bid, say 5 - 10%. If you get outbid so be it, but there is also the chance that you will win the item at a much lower price.

A trick I use to fool the micro-bidders is if they are really active for a particular item is to make a bid of an unusual amount. By unusual amount I mean instead of bidding a flat bid of $56, bid $56.37. I have won a few auctions by the skin of my teeth using this tactic. It is funny to look at the bidding history after the auction and seeing that the last bidder that tried to outbid you made a bid of $56, if they had gone $1 higher they would have won. The best bit is that you still get the item for a $56.


Moral of the story, micro bidding is annoying and can drive the bidding too high. Know your limit, stick too it, and bid smart.

Pixel Art

A Recipe

• Take one random photo.
• Open in image viewing/editing program, I used Irfanview.
• Crop the feature you want to' pixelise'.
• Reduce the colour depth to something manageable, say 16 colours.
• Reduce size of selection to something manageable, say 64 x 64 pixels.
• Copy into Paint (or other raster image editor).
• Remove dithering and smooth out areas using the basic set of colours.
• Add highlights and shadows (I actually did this as part of the above step, but not very well).
• Resize at will (do not re sample) making sure the aspect ratio preserved.
• Save as PNG. Or if you want an icon ICO (in Irfanview of similar).
  

The perspective is completely out, the shadows are kind of weird, and all undercarriage detail is missing. For my first real attempt at creating pixel art, I'm quite happy. Supposedly you are meant to put everything in cartoon like black lines as well. It reminds me of the artwork in old DOS games.

There are no doors or windows on the side either, they are too hard to draw.

Oh and this is the rear of the train in case you didn't realise.

The Rimmer Experience

Today I bought a 250gb external hard drive. Lately I've decided to name all my computers and drives after things and characters in red dwarf, so I decided Kryten would be a good name. My computer is called Red Dwarf and I have a flash drive called Starbug. So while looking for an icon to use for the new drive I got a little distracted in the sea of all things Red Dwarf. In fact I stumbled over something I had completely forgotten about. The Rimmer Experience, which takes place in the 7th season of the show, when Rimmer travels away from Red Dwarf as Ace Rimmer (fellows, smoke me a kipper I'll be back for breakfast.). I'm much more familiar with the first 4 seasons, anything after that I've only seen once or twice.

The Rimmer Experience

I would embed the video, but BBC Worldwide has disabled the embedding feature. There are others but this is the fullest version I could find).

Links:

• The Official Red Dwarf Website
• Red Dwarf - Wikipedia
• List of Red Dwarf Episodes - Wikipedia
• Red Dwarf sound bytes

Now if you don't mind, I've got some skutters to attend to....

If you've got this far you've done well. if you liked the Rimmer experience you'll love tongue tied. I have a vague recollection that I made a post about tongue tied some time in the past, but it was before I started tagging posts so it's a bit hard to find right now. Go look it up on You Tube.

And after all that I still haven't found a decent Kryten icon to use...

Mki farce

News today is that myki has been delayed yet again. Honestly I don't know why the government has persisted with myki for so long, but with all the hardware that has been installed on stations trams and buses recently we must be near the point of no return. Really we should have followed NSW lead and dumped the smart card system altogether. Kosky doesn't seem interested, so here is my suggestion.

I don't claim to understand the technicalities of the software problem, but it would seem to be related to the new features rather than the basics. Surely an interim measure can be made to get the hardware working as a direct replacement for the current Metcard hardware, which as the article states has been allowed to run down over the last few years. Just get the hardware selling and validating tickets the same way as the Metcard does now. As far as I can tell the hardware is all but ready to go, why not use it now rather than let it just sit there unused for 3-4 years?!

When the bugs have been sorted out issue a software update to introduce the new functionality.

Rain

In the recent rain episode we recorded 35 mm in our backyard rain gauge from 6 am Saturday to 9 am this morning. This is more than the 28.8 mm recorded over the same period at the nearest BOM weather station at Viewbank (about 1.5-2 km away as the crow flies). In the radar image above, which shows rainfall over 24 hours to 9am this morning, you can see a small green patch to the north west of the Viewbank place mark. This seems to correlate to the rainfall reading of our gauge V.S. the Viewbank gauge.

Our rain gauge is a cheap one from K Mart, it consists of the plastic gauge and a stick it sits on the top of which is pushed into the ground. I don't know how accurate it is though, I'll have to measure the markings on the side to find out.

Pop Songs

By pop songs I mean songs that pop into your head for no apparent reason. This happened to me the other week at work. A colleague a few desks away on the other side of the partition has a clock radio that I can sometimes hear. For one instant I thought I heard a song I haven't heard for years, but I soon realised it was actually a different newer song. in that instant I was gone and I had that older song stuck in my head. I couldn't recall the name, or the band, I only had some of the tune and a line of the lyrics.

"they could see the road that they walked on was paved in gold"

So I typed the lyrics into Google, and sure enough I discovered other people wanted to know the same thing. It turned out that the song is called "The Way" by a band called Fastball. I finally got around to finding it on YouTube. It's funny because I've heard the newer different song a few times since and it still makes me think of "The Way" even though it actually sounds nothing like it.

I still have no idea what the newer song is or who sings it, all I know is that Mix play at least twice each workday between 9 AM and 5 PM...

The World's Oldest Light Bulb

That should be longest burning light globe. I'm sure there are others that are older but have burned out. It has burned for 108 years, is called the Centennial Light and is housed in the Livermore- Pleasanton Fire Department in Livermore, California. It even has it's own website with web cam.

Geo-Tube

I was mucking around with google maps and found out that you can embed YouTube videos in the info boxes, so I put in some place marks for all three of my videos and embedded the videos in the info boxes, simple. This is the result.

View Larger Map

Unfortunately the embedded map is a little small to view the videos, but the full size map accessed via the links is a bit better. I'll have to see if I can get a smaller video size by editing the embed url of the video.

It has got me thinking that I should start carrying around my GPS more often so I can try some geotagging.

My GPS is not one of the fancy new sat nav thingos though, it's a Garmin GPS 12, a model which is about 15 years old and very heavy due to the 4 AA batteris it takes. I got it for my 21st birthday way back before GPS went mainstraem. It has no maps built in, it just stores waypoints and track logs. I mostly use it for Geocaching, something I should blog about in it's own right.

Geotagging is just adding a set of geographical coordinates to the metadata of a photo so it can be located on a map. Flickr allows you to geotag your photos as well. I also believe there is a way to add coordinates to the EXIF data stored in the JPEG file, but I don't know anything about that. Although this is pretty much in my line of work, it is something I've never really investigated.

Station Street

I like streets that have descriptive names. Things like Station Street, Jetty Rd and Sydney Rd. They tell you what you can expect to find when you go down them. Some describe things that can be found in that street, others after other places the street leads to.

Every town has a Station Street, sometimes even when the railway line no longer exists. Wandin North is calls its Station Street, Rue de Gare, the gare is long gone but the rue remains. Station street could have multiple meanings, if both the police station and railway station are located along it. I'm not sure about the origin of Police Road though. Bridge road leads to a bridge. Daylesford has a Hospital Street, obviously that's where you go when you want a bit of medical attention. Bank Street I assume houses/housed a bank or two.

Why is it that St Kilda has a Fitzroy Street and Fitzroy a Brunswick Street, but Brunswick does not have a St Kilda Street? Strangely enough St Kilda Street is in St Kilda. None of those streets lead you to places they are named after, except Brunswick Street at least points in the right direction kind of...

Many towns in Victoria have a Melbourne Road which invariably points the way to Melbourne. Melbourne in turn has a lot of roads poking out radially that lead to far off places in the country (some are now suburbs) for which those roads are named. Sydney, Geelong, Ballarat, Dandenong, Point Nepean (now Nepean highway) Burwood, Toorak, Plenty and Williamstown. Although the latter no longer has a link to it's namesake, a long gone car ferry over the Saltwater River.

Maybe I'm stating the obvious but I like a road or street name with meaning, one where you look at the sign and think, wow that road could take me places.

Rail to Doncaster

In The Age today is an opinion piece written by Graeme Davison. He rightly asserts that the Doncaster rail line should have been built 40 years ago when the area began to be heavily developed, but is against the building of a line because of the issues involved with tunnelling and the fact it would travel along the Eastern Freeway away from where the potential passengers live:

Yet, for more than half its length, a Doncaster railway would run through the Yarra Bend National Park and across the parkland and golf courses of the Yarra River flats. Golfers and bushwalkers might welcome it, but it would generate next to no commuter traffic. At North Balwyn (Burke Road), passengers would alight about half a kilometre from the nearest houses, while on the north side of Bulleen station, students from Marcellin College are about the only prospective customers. The line would cross Doncaster Road about 1.5 kilometres from the main transport and shopping hub, Shoppingtown. You would either have to tunnel several kilometres under Shoppingtown to East Doncaster, extend the Doncaster tramway to Shoppingtown or rely on feeder buses to reach a station on Doncaster Road.

Davison claims that the railway would travel mostly through parkland and would not create patronage. He seems to conveniently forget that the freeway runs through there too, and does not gain much in the way of traffic from those areas either.

Davison also asserts that you would need to tunnel for kilometres under Doncaster Shoppingtown to East Doncaster. I don't know where he has been for the last 40 years, but a vast amount of tunnelling has always been on the agenda in the Doncaster area. This is not a new thing, and in fact it will help bring the line closer to where the people are, something he uses against the building of the line in the same paragraph.

Davison goes on to claim that:

Transport research shows the reluctance of commuters to put up with bad connections. Any break in transport mode — say, from bus to train — creates frustration, especially if the scheduled service doesn't come. If the Doncaster rail requires a network of feeder buses, the passengers might as well stay aboard the existing express bus services and ride down the freeway along a dedicated lane all the way to the city. Maybe that's why the Eddington report hasn't opted for a Doncaster railway but for a major upgrade of the existing DART (Doncaster Area Rapid Transit) bus service. You may be asking: but don't buses run on polluting and fast-depleting oil? Yes, but although trains run on clean and abundant electricity, that power is generated from the most polluting of all fossil fuels, brown coal. It's only when trains and trams are full that they come out ahead of cars. Railways and trams wear a halo of environmental respectability that is only half-deserved.

To that I say that if the rail frequency and feeder bus frequency are sufficiently high then issues of missed connections will not be a problem. If the rail frequencies on this line were near metro levels (and I would expect the Doncaster line to be part of a segregated network than an extension of the current system) of a train every 5 minutes in peak and every 10 minutes in off peak. Have the feeder buses run every 10 minutes on main roads intersecting the rail line throughout the day, which means the longest connection in the peak would be about 5 minutes and at most 10 minutes off peak. Overall this would equate to an average waiting time for the whole journey of 7.5 minutes peak and 10 minutes off peak. If the connections are good (and by current Melbourne standards these are very good), people will use them.

He does make a good point with the fact that we get our electricity from brown coal. Cleaner and more sustainable energy sources are something that we need to work on. However that does not diminish the fact that all forms of public transport whether powered by electricity generated by burning brown coal, or by burning diesel fuel in a combustion engine, are more efficient at moving large amounts of people than cars are.

This paragraph confuses me though:

The Melbourne 2030 plan was based on the shaky assumption that increasing residential densities around the main public transport system would improve the viability of public transport. But even when density increased, residents often continued to drive their cars. Now there is a swing in the other direction, towards the equally erroneous belief that if you provide the transport, the residential patterns will change and the passengers will come. The Doncaster railway dream is a perfect illustration of that belief.

If anything Davison appears to be having a punt each way in this paragraph. What little development that has occurred under the auspices of Melbourne 2030 has been stymied by contrary government policies and local interests. I would argue that because of this densities have not increased that much in the Melbourne 2030 transit cities. The reason the few new residents continued to drive is exactly as he states, the public transport improvements were not forthcoming, and while they are slowly happening are not happening fast enough. The government is to blame for not having enough will to back up it's own strategies. If anything you only need to look to Perth for examples of where this sort of strategy has been implemented successfully with the Northern Suburbs rail line. In comparison a rail line to Doncaster should be child's play.

In his final paragraph Davison is spot on by stating that public transport needs to be constructed at the time of development, and should have been the case at Doncaster. He is also right that the there needs to be a rail service along Wellington Rd to Monash University and Rowville where there is also a high demand for such services, but there is demand in Doncaster as well.

More Human Tetris

This one is different to the last though. It uses stop go animation and is more faithful to the video game. The sound effects and music are great.



Also in the series are Space Invaders, Pong and Poll Position.

Human Tetris

AKA Brain Wall. Someone was telling me about this a few weeks ago.



Apparently Channel 9 has the rights to a version of this show called Hole in the Wall coming to our screens soon.

The non Eddinton report post.

I was going to write a post on the Eddington Report but I have read so much about it I'm not sure what I think of it any more. Well, I think I'm against it, I'm just not sure why. Actually yes I do... (see what I mean)

I've read so many opinions on what needs to be done, I'm not sure what is original thought and what is not, I suspect I read most of this elsewhere. I'm just repackaging it. One of the best alternate proposals I've read so far is at Phin's blog, part one deals with the western side of the network while the future part two deals with the eastern side. So far so good, but from what I can see he is not totally dismissing the north-south tunnel , but sending it elsewhere.

What is my view on the Eddington report?

First of all I see public transport components of the report as nothing but a cover to get the road tunnel linking the Eastern Freeway and Citylink/Westgate Freeway/Western Ring Road approved. I imagine that as time goes along the public transport components will get scaled back piece by piece, just quietly drop off the agenda one by one until we are left with only minor changes to public transport. All the while the road project will bubble along nicely until completion. I hope that is not the case however and that the sensible suggestions go ahead (ie everything but the insane line from Werribee to Deer Park).

While thinking over the past few weeks I've come around to the view that we do need a sort of "clearways" project for Melbourne, the first steps of which are due to happen in the November timetable change with removal of Werribee trains from the loop in the peaks and the fixing of the direction of the Clifton Hill loop. I would like to see the Werribee line permanently out of the loop and the reaming loops to permanently travel in the same direction like the Clifton hill loop so that there are always two lines running in opposite directions. I suggest:

Clockwise- Clifton Hill and Burnley
Anti-clockwise - Northern and Caulfield

Most of the work needed to iron things out involve smaller, un-sexy projects that need doing to improve the flow of trains, these include things like building more flyovers at junctions, grade separation, re-signalling, extra platforms, new crossovers, straightening out junctions and old diversions of no longer existent infrastructure, as well as altering operational practices such as changing drivers at outer suburban termini instead of at Flinders Street, and cutting the dwell time at Flinders Street to that of a normal station. Then there is the complete rebuilding of major junctions and interchanges such as Caulfield and North Melbourne, which are more long term projects.

A cheap and cheerful short term fix is the addition of extra grab handles and bars to existing rollingstock. That would be most welcome. Other changes could be fitting lateral flip up seating at each end of each car to provide more standing room, such as that found at the driving ends of Siemens motor cars. I may be selfish, but I like having somewhere comfy to sit on the train, so I think this is a good compromise.

Longer term I think there should be a two tier service on all lines with inner suburban all stations trains and outer suburban expresses. This however relies on sorting out the other stuff first. Coupled with this I think through routing the outer suburban expresses through Flinders Street to the opposite side of the city (anyone remember the proposed "Flyer Trains" at the time of privatisation) would be a good move.

Game On

Yesterday I went to Game On at ACMI (for some reason I wrote ACME the first time...). It was fantastic. I saw a lot of games I haven't seen for years, and lots of others that I've never seen first hand like Nintendo's epic failure, the Virtual Boy. Most landmark games were included, but of course there were a lot that could have been included but weren't because there is simply not enough room. As the person I went with remarked, "where is World of Warcraft?", which is probably one of the most iconic current games.

The best part is the fact that almost everything is playable, from the early arcade game Space Wars, classics like Pac Man, Donkey Kong and Galaga, the glory days of the 8 bit consoles and PC's in the '80s, through to the Nintendo Wii. I would have liked to have tried out the PC game Portal (which is included in the "Orange Box" I talked about a few posts ago), but it was being hogged by a hooded figure who was playing for at least an hour while we were there. Definitely not in the spirit of the game.

While not for everyone, I think most people could appreciate the exhibition. It could even change the perception that video and computer games are just for kids. Having said that I want to take my neice and nephew, as I think they'd love it. Especially after showing them my Gameboy Pocket a few weeks ago. I got them to turn it on, and after about 10 seconds one of them asked "when does the light come on?". They were a bit perturbed when I told them it doesn't have a light in it and that you need to play in a bright part of the room. They are used to their modern Nintendo DS with backlit dual screens. I think I could show them a thing or two at Game On.

My advice is if you are thinking of going, go early, especially on weekends. We got there just after opening at 10, but by the time we left at 12 it was really packed.

Regional non-fast rail - Part 2

VLocity unit 15 has completed platform duties,
is closing the doors and is nearly ready to go.

VL 15 heads off around the bend, next station Heathcote Junction.

Track machines in the Standard gauge siding at the Melbourne end of Wallan loop.

This photo was taken at the Hobsons Bay Model Railway Club's Exhibition of Australian Model Railways that is held over the Easter weekend each year. Shown is an N scale model railway layout based on Wallan back when it was a more substantial station (compare now (sort of) and then). In the front are the broad gauge running lines, then the large broad gauge yard, while at the rear is the standard gauge line with two trains crossing in the loop. The track machines in the photo above this one are parked in a small siding that is not depicted, that runs off the start of the loop, and would be parked just behind where the blue and red locomotives are (these are NR class locomotives in Indian Pacific and The Ghan colour schemes BTW). Most crossing loops on the north east standard gauge have at least one such siding for the storage of track machines or broken down locomotives and rolling stock. This layout is owned by the Victorian N Scale Collective.

Regional non-fast rail - Part 1

Went for a drive today up to Bradford and back home again via Wallan. I decided to stop in at the stations of both these towns and was rewarded at each by a train within 10 minutes of arrival. It was interesting to note that V/Line is using the latest VLocity railcars on this line at weekends despite the fact that this line was not part of the regional fast rail project. During the week it is a mix of older Sprinter railmotors (railcars) and locomotive hauled carriages. Anyway at Broadford I took some photos of this Melbourne bound train, it appeared to have a full seated load which surely is a good sign.

VLocity 1131-1231 approaching Broadford station while on
route from Seymour to Melbourne Southern Cross.

This section of track between Craigieburn and Seymour is notable in that it is the last remaining section of double line block safe working in Victoria (if not in Australia). What this means is that the line is divided into sections or blocks. In total there are 5* blocks, these being:

• Craigieburn - Donnybrook*
  
• Donnybrook - Wallan
• Wallan - Kilmore East
• Kilmore East - Broadford
• Broadford - Seymour

* Until the extension of suburban trains to Craigieburn last year there was a block between Broadmeadows and Somerton and another between Somerton and Donnybrook. When the suburban extension to Craigieburn opened the block instruments from Somerton were moved to Craigieburn.

At each station mentioned above there are machines known as Winter's Block Instruments (Winter being the inventor), one for each section of each line. These allow the signaller to communicate with the signaller at the next or previous station using bell codes and indicator needles to negotiate the progress of a train along the line. The signals are sent along the telegraph wires or other communications lines beside the railway. The system is explained in much better detail at Vicsig.

VLocity 1131-1231 loading/unloading passengers at Broadford.

Anyway the point is that the infrastructure required for Double Line Block can be seen in the photo above. There is the signal box on the right which houses the signaller, signal levers and block instruments. Further down the line you can see the down starting signal in front of the train, which allows a train into the next block. On the right of the other line is the down home signal which accepts trains in to the station. These arrangements are reversed at the other end of the station (somewhat visible in the first photo). These are both lower quadrant semaphore signals. There is also a crossover which at a guess is only used in case of emergency under special instructions from the signaller and train control (Centrol) in Melbourne.

I should also mention Double Line Block allows stations to be "switched in" and "switched out" as needed. So for busy times all the stations can be switched in to allow a maximum number of trains through, while at quieter times some of the stations can be "switched out" . Today was one of those quieter times, and I believe it was operating as a single block from Craigieburn to Seymour.

VLocity 1131-1231 disappearing towards Melbourne.

In this final photo you can clearly see the standard gauge line from Melbourne to Albury to the left of the double track broad gauge line. This line has recently been re-laid with concrete sleepers for it's length and longer passing loops known as passing lanes are under construction. The concrete sleepers allow for higher speeds, particularly on curves, and have a longer life span that wooden sleepers (not to mention that we are running out of good quality red gum that is needed for environmental reasons to remain as trees). The existing passing loops are about 2 km at most, which defines the maximum length of the trains that can run on this line (to I believe about 1.8 km), and require many trains to be "put away" or stopped in the loops in order to cross (rail term for trains passing each other in opposite directions) a train in the opposing direction or be overtaken by a faster train . The new passing lanes in contrast will be many kilometres in length (perhaps 5 to 10 I'm not sure on the specifics) which will allow trains to simply pass each other while moving, which make for even faster travel times. All this work is being undertaken by the ARTC (Australian Rail Track Corporation) a federally funded corporation which manages the interstate standard gauge rail network.

Earth Hour

Last night people flocked to cities around the world to see them in darkness. This is what they saw.