It seems mostly rural. My first guess is simply increased ton/km - more trucks, bigger, heavier, going further, more often.

The road industry has never paid for road maintenance, so any increase in it results in a (probably more than proportionate) increase in government costs.

A 79 class was apparently loaned in Apr 1945 to BHP Port Kembla for trials - which would have been a main line journey from St Marys to Port Kembla and return.

I couldn't imagine that it was transferred from Ipswich to FNQ any other way than (slowly) by rail under its own power.

I also have a note of an 'APM Maryvale Shunting Diesel' running from Port Melbourne to Maryvale on 14 Jan 1939 (a Malcolm Moore, possib actually a petrol loco)

There's a reason why motor vehicles are considered one of the major safety problems for rail.

Consider Selby (so far the worst UK rail accident in the 21st century)... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selby_r...

Well, they became familiar with Metro's security response. Which must have been very prompt given the speed at which service was restored. (I suspect there were all sorts of Metro resources available boots on ground on Sunday in case of problems.)

Article in The Age... On duty firefighters gained unauthorised access for what the union claimed was an 'urgent familiarisation drill' and were removed by Network Security Officers.

www.theage.com.au/national/vic...

Yeah, S, whose is more into the book of face masks, keeps telling me about the messages fed to her. The many people who confuse it with the car tunnel. The people who *repeatedly* complain it will make their journey longer. Or repeat inaccurate factoids (EMI).

Particularly as the equivalent space in the Sydney Metro (Gadigal) is a giant artwork.

(S & I came up from the platforms and we both initially thought it looked like a giant server rack and couldn't work out why... artwork???)

If you start thinking about this deeply, it spirals out of control.

Many local libraries have physically restructured their organisations collections around broad themes to facilitate serendipity.

Yep, that's why some catalogues offer the ability to list in call number sequence; a partial cue for serendipity.

But, the Dewey classification is only one scheme of knowledge organisation. How many linkages are missed because other books weren't brought together?

This interesting article (should be in an railfan publication, not in The Age) suggests the Melb idea dates back to at least 1997, with a further kick along in 2003.

This doesn't eliminate cross-fertilisation, or an older back story to the Sydney Metro, of course.

www.theage.com.au/politics/vic...

Bet there was no cheer when the carriage entered the tunnel. Not like in our carriage.

I hadn't realised they were planning to take out the western junction.

(The slow down over the junction is very noticable)

Interestingly someone at Caulfield got confused and announced that the first two carriages of the 1st Westbound were reserved, so move down the platform.

(This was clearly seen to be false as the train entered the platform :-)

Having seen all of them now, I reckon the Parkville concourse is the best, particular when the sun is out. State Library and Town Hall (in particular) feel deep underground (I mean, they are).

Says something about train capacity that I don't think anyone got left behind on the first Westbound