Corio doesn’t have a standard gauge platform !

North Shore has a short one, both stations are uninviting dumps !

Corio might just be the only passenger interchange point between The broad and standard gauge so closing this might remove some options especially if standard gauge is built from Ballarat to Ararat meaning as mentioned in previous contributions the Overland starts running again via Ballarat

Have I got this right from a beginner?

I never really worked out why sunshine was not rebuilt with the standard gauge platform allowing interchange from Sydney and Albury services with Ballarat and Bendigo services. Seems rather stupid.

I believe corio and Ararat are currently the only stops where interchange can happen?

The standard gauge platform is at North Shore

try North Shore, Belgrave, Broadmeadows Seymour, Southern Cross,

North Shore has the Standard Gauge platform, albeit a very short one.

I would be interested to know what sort of passenger useage it gets, it isn't exactly somewhere I would like to be dropped if travelling from interstate, not really Victoria at its finest.

With only 4 trains stopping at North Shore on the SG every week, is this worth retaining?

And yes, Along with North Shore, there is also Ararat, Seymour, Broadmeadows and Southern Cross with both gauges interfacing at the same station. Belgrave is a bit of a stretch, the NG Puffing Billy Belgrave station is a seperate station, across the road from the BG Belgrave Metro station.

I believe the SG platform at North Shore was actually paid for by the local council to encourage stopping there. It's probably not a bad deal for anyone Geelong-based wanting to take the Overland, as North Shore has a lot of connecting buses and seems to have become somewhat less dodgy.

Speaking of dodgy, Corio isn't a place anyone sensible would leave their car but there does always seem to be a few people getting on and off there - usually the night time passengers have someone drive up to collect them. It might seem out the middle of nowhere but you'd be foolish to close any station on the Geelong line the way passenger numbers are on the rise (not to mention that commuting-wise Geelong itself is often the station with the least number of passengers boarding in the morning) - there's often a bit of local traffic there too with people going from Corio to Lara and vice versa.

Speaking of dodgy, Corio isn't a place anyone sensible would leave their car but there does always seem to be a few people getting on and off there - usually the night time passengers have someone drive up to collect them. It might seem out the middle of nowhere but you'd be foolish to close any station on the Geelong line the way passenger numbers are on the rise (not to mention that commuting-wise Geelong itself is often the station with the least number of passengers boarding in the morning) - there's often a bit of local traffic there too with people going from Corio to Lara and vice versa.

As the Princes Freeway bypasses Geelong and is in close proximity to Corio station there has been discussion about modernising the station and turning it into a Parkway station to pick up potential pax driving from the western district who wouldn't normally catch a train from one of the Geelong stations.

Corio as a Parkway, obviously would have to be manned... has plenty of room and is well overdue for a refurb. Go through there any time of the day, there are few cars parked there due to the low socio-economic locality and the higher crime rates....not sure why I'm trying to be 'PC' with my comments here...

Mike.

The Corio Parkway Station site is quite some distance towards Melbourne immediately beyong the Geelong By Pass Overpass.   The site was chosen because it would enable access from the off ramp of the Geelong By Pass and has an enormous footprint of two to 3,000 cars as a proper Parkway should.   In other words its no where near the existing Corio Station which should be be closed

Grid Reference for New Corio Parkway

Lara Station Is a parkway ! Why do you need another one next to It ?

Lara was the first toe in the water as far as the Parkway concept was developed.  The capacity of Laras current car parking is largely maxed out anyway and its not ideal to use such a relatively small area to increase capacity.

Most importantly it is not immediately adjacent to the freeway at a point where with real time train information and real time road travel time information provided, motorists can way up the option of driving or taking the train.    The more accessible to the freeway the Parkway is increases the potential to move more people onto PT.    In addition their location is also designed to minimize impacts on local residents and local streets.   Corio Parkway is in that sense perfect.   Its in an industrial precinct and sits immediately adjacent to both the freeway and the railway with highly visible, easy access with the potential to siphon an enormous amount of traffic onto PT if we fix RRL up and not have V/Line involved in running a suburban service out of Wyndham Vale and Tarneit

I would have thought fellow Gunzels would be hoping stations don't get closed?

I would have thought fellow Gunzels would be hoping stations don't get closed?

Welcome to the Forum B Class diesel

Wait till you start reading the rants of some of the economists who post in these pages...ZH, missing in action

Mike.

I would have thought fellow Gunzels would be hoping stations don't get closed?

Welcome to the Forum B Class diesel

Wait till you start reading the rants of some of the economists who post in these pages...ZH, missing in action

Mike.

Thank you Mike. Not everything is about money. there are many lines that were shut by bean counters that had a lot of history.

I would have thought fellow Gunzels would be hoping stations don't get closed?

What's the point of a train stopping at a station that nobody uses? Besides dribblers taking photos, that is.

I would have thought fellow Gunzels would be hoping stations don't get closed?

Welcome to the Forum B Class diesel

Wait till you start reading the rants of some of the economists who post in these pages...ZH, missing in action

Mike.

Thank you Mike. Not everything is about money. there are many lines that were shut by bean counters that had a lot of history.

Keeping a line open because of its history doesn't stack up even with those of us who are not economists.

History has to be maintained or it falls into disrepair and if it's not being used there's little point in funding to mothball it.
Travel by train to Castlemaine then travel the popular steam train to Maldon which is an accurate representation of VR history.

http://www.vgr.com.au/homepage.php

I guarantee you'll have a splendid day out in the country.

Mike.

I would have thought fellow Gunzels would be hoping stations don't get closed?

What's the point of a train stopping at a station that nobody uses? Besides dribblers taking photos, that is.

I thought this was a site for rail fans. there seems to be a lot of people advocating for the destruction of rail here

I would have thought fellow Gunzels would be hoping stations don't get closed?

What's the point of a train stopping at a station that nobody uses? Besides dribblers taking photos, that is.

I thought this was a site for rail fans. there seems to be a lot of people advocating for the destruction of rail here

As Mike The Vinelander (who is a huge advocate for PT and rail in particular and certainly no economic rationalist) said there is no point hanging on to rail lines or stations for the sake of it. That was one of the problems faced by rail during the 60s and 70s, trying to hang on to everything in the face of declining freight and passenger usage and increased road use.

Victoria is actually doing pretty well on the passenger rail side of things these days. Compare it to my birth state of SA which has had it's once mighty rail network completely decimated. Lordy even freight is showing some glimmer of hope here with new players entering the market and the Murray Basin project kicking off.

But it needs to be done on a sensible basis, just throwing taxpayers money into a bottomless pit of railway expenditure helps no one.

This rail fan would much rather have a sensible and well run network (which has seen massive passenger numbers growth over the last 10 or so years) than no network at all.

BG

I would have thought fellow Gunzels would be hoping stations don't get closed?

What's the point of a train stopping at a station that nobody uses? Besides dribblers taking photos, that is.

I thought this was a site for rail fans. there seems to be a lot of people advocating for the destruction of rail here

Some of us are just able to understand how the real world works thats all.

Railways are an expensive business. A state owned railway has to compete with other important sectors for funding. Like Policing, Education, Health care, etc.

For the Railway to be able to exist, it must run with some form of efficiency. Keeping a station open that doesn't serve a worthwhile passenger purpose just because it has historical significance is not compatible with running a modern efficient railway.

By all means, if the station is significant enough, preserve it as a community space, but that doesn't mean that trains need to stop there. Take Wycheproof for example. The old station building has been beatifully restored, but passenger trains don't stop there, they haven't for well over 30 years. That will not change, it doesn't mean the history of the old station is lost.

Just because some of us understand the realities involved in this space, it doesn't mean we are not fans of trains, we just have an idea of how hard it is to keep everything going, and how much harder than that it is to get anything new built.

----

Besides, what did you expect from Railpage anyway? A bunch of foamers going on along the lines of...

"they should build a new line here, and new stations here and there and oh gawd it will be amazing and there will be free stuff for everyone and wowee".

Yeah, there is a bit of that, but it gets pretty mind numbing before too long. If that's what you want though, there is always the Armchair Operators section of the forum. But be warned.

Gman put it brilliantly. If you spend more money on railways, then you have to find that money by doing one or more of these things:

• Cutting back on politically sensitive areas like police, health, education etc. (Colloquially called "widows and orphans")
• Raising taxes
• Borrowing even more money, that younger people like B Class will have to pay interest on and repay through taxes in the future

Now we live in a democracy and neither the Liberal nor Labour parties would dare try any of those to more than a tiny extent because it would be political suicide. That means less people would vote for a political party that proposed doing those things, so they would never get to be the state government. While small political parties like Green, Conservative, One Nation, etc. may advocate borrowing lots and spending big, they can only say that because they have no chance of being the government. The harsh realities of being a government mean that you have to live within your means. Just like people who spend more than they earn go bankrupt, the same applies to governments.

To automatically know that, you don't need to have studied economics, you just need to have had a job to earn an income and lived independently in the real world for a few years. Thus teenagers living with their parents have no idea how to run personal finances or how a governments finances need to be run.

I would have thought fellow Gunzels would be hoping stations don't get closed?

What's the point of a train stopping at a station that nobody uses? Besides dribblers taking photos, that is.

I thought this was a site for rail fans. there seems to be a lot of people advocating for the destruction of rail here

Some of us rail fans on this site are fans of rail that makes economic sense, and not just fans of sandbox rail that has no concern about the money it costs.  To us, the economic and financial side are just as exciting as the engineering specs of steam locos from 100 years ago, or stations/lines that may exist only in the minds of planners.

The only stations which deserve to be closed are those that are within a kilometre of another, regardless of whether it is in regional Victoria or suburban Melbourne.