"Books enable the historian to tell a complex story, explore the different sources used to find out about the past and interpret their significance. They help the public understand crucial events and periods, and how they continue to shape our present."

Wow. This has got to be one the worst takes in a world full of bad takes.

An overcast, wintry late afternoon at Canberra Railway station sees the regular 3-car Xplorer set ready to depart with the 5.08pm departure to Sydney.

Can we call the Australia v Paraguay match tonight the ‘William Lane Trophy’ match? #NewAustraliaBound youtu.be/bJlMMN6_yP0?...

Of interest to @drdrehistorian.bsky.social I’d imagine? substack.com/@thegradycon...

Name a TV show you’re positive no-one remembers but you… en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Los...

Some scans from the back catalogue: My first visit to Adelaide in July 1998. Apart from Adelaide Railway Station (the last great Australian terminal station), the decay seen in stations like Port Adelaide were indicative of the decline of rail in that city until the revival began a decade later.

Another discovery in the dusty recesses of my poster collection: a selection of 4 CountryLink posters c.early 2000s advertising rail package holidays in NSW & the value of travelling by train. Getting these to market (on EBay) to make room for other purchases.

100 years ago: on 10 June 1926, the Brisbane Limited left Sydney, bound for Wallangarra, where a narrow gauge train was to take the passengers on to Brisbane. Tragically, as the train passed Aberdeen at around 9:50 pm, a wooden viaduct collapsed under the train. Photo by my grandfather

OTD 9 years ago: A brief chase of 9365 Grain bound for Merriwagga on the Hillston line led by veteran ALCo branchliners 864/4814/852. With a combined 163 years of service, the three stalwart branch line locos drag their train of empties through Yanco in southern NSW.

9 years ago today: This photo is for me, the essence of being a rail enthusiast. Standing in a paddock under a cloudless sky in winter sunshine waiting to get *that* photo, in this case it’s the Griffith-bound Xplorer crossing a loaded Grain train bound for Port Kembla taken near Grong Grong NSW.

Got out for a photo run on the NSW Main South line last Friday on cloudy afternoon that turned into some beautiful golden hour light near sunset. Some of the fruits of my labours shown here with captions in Alt text:

Quote with a fictional band that is not Spinal Tap

Slightly increase a band: The Five Tops

Joint media release on CBR-SYD rail upgrade: minister.infrastructure.gov.au/c-king/media... Key points: 5-year, $100m incremental upgrading plan to: investigate new express services, LX upgrades, Improved track alignment/turnouts, Station/stabling improvements. First focus on Goulburn-Canberra line

A piece by A/Prof Philip Laird on how cancelling Inland Rail north of Parkes continues the ‘existing arrangements’ of Federal land transport policy in Australia (e.g. more/bigger trucks either powered by diesel or, increasingly, electricity: theconversation.com/after-dumpin...

Another Federal Budget teaser drop in today’s Telegraph. $50m from the Feds to (most likely) investigate speeding up the Canberra-Sydney rail service. The current 3 x daily service takes about 4h 10m for the 329km journey. Increasing speed &/or frequency should be a prime target for any upgrades.

Welcoming all the newly minted experts on Inland Rail to the platform.

Today: it’s a gloriously sunny autumn morning in Canberra and the midday Xplorer service (SP34) to Sydney is boarding passengers at Canberra (Kingston) station.

Got some incidental railfanning in on Easter Sunday. Here, 2-car Xplorer set 2526/2506 race through the closed station at Galong on the NSW Main South with the SP44 service from Griffith. It combines at Goulburn with the SP34 service from Canberra for the run through to Sydney.

High levels of schadenfreude from reading the comments after watching City Mousse’s latest tawdry video on the ‘failure’ of Parra light rail.

Not the best shot due to sun angle, however, today at Canberra railway station sees the 3-car Xplorer set making up the midday departure to Sydney in the platform road; while a rake of empty carriages sits in the back road to make up the 12.15 Picnic Train departure to Bungendore.

In Melbourne for the long weekend. Enjoying the Comeng farewell tour Metro has organised for me to inadvertently take part in yesterday & today.

Transit bros discover cable cars. Really small use case outside of some fairly niche applications and relatively low capacity, but still a legitimate public transport technology.

After the recent Canberra light rail shutdown in January, tram rails are over Alinga Street & the intersection has been narrowed to a bus only lane with more pedestrian standing & crossing area. Not a bad rebuild.

After the recent Canberra light rail shutdown in January, tram rails are over Alinga Street & the intersection has been narrowed to a bus only lane with more pedestrian standing & crossing area. Not a bad rebuild.

No, these are very serious comments. ChatGPT has absolutely no goddamn place in graduate education. It steals from other authors, routinely gets major facts wrong, hallucinates sources, and generally makes the prose flat and boring as hell. And if you shill for it in my mentions, I'll block you.

Canberra Light Rail 2A works are in full swing, with Alinga St terminus being excavated along with the big intersection at Northbourne to get ready to lay track down to London Circuit. This week sees the start of a month of light rail bustitution & every CDC bus across NSW is involved.

Does anyone have access to the IRSE technical meeting papers database? Some interesting papers I’m seeking in regard to 1980s-90s CTC installations in NSW & SA. @mandrewwaugh.bsky.social? @fixedblock.bsky.social?

Resilience of the national rail network tested again after a derailment today at Mambray Creek (SA) cuts off Western Australia & the Northern Territory from Eastern Australia (photo: Channel 7)

Happy New Year. A recent acquisition was this 65-ish year old document on the first new sleeping cars built for the NSWGR since the inter-war period. The initial 10 stainless steel cars were built at Comeng, Granville NSW using methods licenced from the US Budd Company… (1/2)

In Canberra today: Flixbus advertising goes up at the Jolimont Centre on Northbourne Avenue in Civic, site of the city’s main long distance coach terminal. Hopefully the dire passenger amenities at Jolimont get a spruce up as well.

Just sold this on Ebay, so I thought I’d post to show how fares & ticketing in Melbourne has/hasn’t changed in 40 years. Getting a periodical ticket was so easy: get a passport photo, get it made into an ID card to buy the periodical, take the card with you to buy the periodical ticket & pay up $$$.

Took advantage of longer summer evenings & an early knock off from work to go and do some photography on the Main South railway around Gunning in NSW. I was planning to go this weekend, but the ARTC shutdown between Sydney & Melbourne cruelled that plan. Captions in Alt text.

Macquarie Dictionary names 'AI slop' as word of the year 2025: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-25/ai-slop-named-macquarie-dictionary-word-of-the-year-2025/106047682

"The ‘rubble films’ were intended to help make sure none of that could ever happen again, and in that, they are among the many intriguing failures of twentieth century culture." - Owen Hatherley thequietus.com/culture/film...

Even contemporary speculative fiction set in the 2050s knows High Speed Rail in Australia is a bust, as stated in this excerpt from Andrew Roff’s ‘These are my demands’ (2025).

Another item from the auction: A reproduction VR poster from Harold Freedman’s ‘Men of Service’ series. Freedman was a war artist in WW2 and later the state artist for Victoria. His major works include the ‘cavalcade of transport’ & ‘the legend of fire’ murals in Melbourne.

Another auction haul: a 1989 map of rail infrastructure in inner Melbourne including the now gone Melbourne Freight Terminal, Hump Yard & the now cut line to Webb Dock & rail sidings in the Port of Melbourne.

It wouldn’t have been a 1970s childhood in Sydney unless you saw this ad…” Electronic Sales & Rentals, 6-4-8-0… 1-double 0!” youtu.be/wPFnaTf36Es

Picked up at auction recently what looks like a full set of CountryLink A4 size holiday brochures from 1998. All bar the North West brochure feature the XPT. A bonus was the ‘welcome aboard’ brochure pre-1994 (no mention of sleeping cars). Enjoy! P.S. they might be for sale if people are interested.

Did a flying visit to Melbourne over the weekend. Only rail action of note was this video of a late running ST22 XPT out of Southern Cross station bound for Sydney races out of twilight into the night as it passes the Beckett St level crossing at Glenroy in Melbourne’s north on Saturday 1 November.

I wouldn't tell anyone I'd won the lottery, but there would be signs... www.bbc.com/news/article...

Transport Canberra bus #400 having a bit of an identity crisis today: TC at the front, ACTION on the back & sides.

OTD in 2014: in your own time Ablo…

Remembering Sonny Terry on his birthday 🎂 At Pete Seeger’s cabin in Beacon, New York 📷 David Gahr, 1958 "In them days I just as soon died - except for my harmonica. It was like a friend who didn’t give a damn if I could see or not."

A couple of minutes away from its arrival at Canberra (Kingston) station, the SP31 service from Sydney rolls through Fyshwick at 11.07 this morning.

This is a valid conclusion but is not new knowledge.An understanding of modern Japanese history & a few English language sources (esp. Hosokawa’s ‘Old Man Thunder’) led many others to the same conclusion decades ago (including me).

Who's solving the Louvre robbery? Right answers only… Good Moaning…

A half-decent textbook on Australian geology (I recommend Laseron & Brunschweiler’s ‘Ancient Australia’) will provide a much richer insight into truly deep time before humans. This book is where I learned the Pilbara has some of the oldest known rocks in the world (c. 2 billion years).