A Work Anniversary

Hi Everyone, 

I hope you’ve have a great Christmas and New Years break, and had some time to relax and catch up with family and friends.

I mentioned in my about page that I’d been working in the rail industry for a fair while, 27 January 2022 actually marks the start of my 35th year!

It seems forever ago that Mum, Dad and my sister dropped me off in Newport where I was boarding, a 16 year old kid who hadn’t spent that much time in the city at all, let alone by myself.

Next morning, I was up bright and early to pedal my bike down to Newport workshop, once the heart of the Victorian Railways  to commence my apprenticeship.

There were lots of other kids starting their railway careers that day, electrical fitters, painters, boilermakers, electricians, fitters and turners, car builders, upholsterers,  almost any trade you could name, and they were there from all over the city and the state.

TAFE was just next door to the workshops, and right beside the Geelong railway, which saw a fair bit of interstate rail traffic, as well as local goods trains, including some shunting at the nearby refineries. 

As the railways was yet to embrace radios for a lot of the shunting, the loco used on these short trips used to have a goodly number of shunters sitting and lounging around on the front of the little Y class so when they got to some of the curvier sidings they could relay hand signals to the driver to start and stop as required. It’s  something that’s very much vanished from the modern railway scene with the traffic long since lost to road transport, and many of the sidings built over.

The Steamrail Victoria depot was also on that side of the workshops, and a common shortcut from TAFE to Newport station was up a rarely used siding, and onto the main walking path. 

After only seeing infrequent steam tours to Bendigo, it was fantastic to wander around the main hub where the locos and carriages were restored and maintained.

There was also a “Workshops train”, a suburban service that ran into the workshop complex in plenty of time for people to get to their section and take their token off the hook to prove they were there and start their day.

In the afternoons, the reverse happened, knock off time came, and the workshops train was waiting to slowly trundle up to Newport station and on to Flinders St.

It was certainly an interesting time, and I’m lucky to have made some friends from those days that I still catch up with, still work with, or bump into occasionally from other parts of the business.

I’ll finish up today with the first photo I took in Melbourne when I moved down, it’s not dated, and won’t win any awards, but its a little piece of my history. Looking towards the Yarra from Platform 14 at Spencer St. The white building in the background is still there, but B84 was retired in May 1988, and platform 16 at Southern Cross is about where the goods lines it’s running on is now.

The old No 1. Goods shed has long gone, with those familiar with modern Melbourne would now know it as near where the “Big Bird” at the curve in Wurundjeri way stands.

Regards,

Scott