Re: ODD SIGNS

["Derick Wuen" <cullend@webone.com.au>]

 

John Wayman wrote in message ...

>I saw a tramway employee with a vermilion safety jacket on in the streets of
>Kew (Melbourne).
>
>The writing  on it said "Tram Overhead"!
>
>I cringed and stared towards the sun, expecting the shadow of a high flying
>street car to cross it.
>
>Is this a super dooper version of Maglev or a modern development of the
>horse drawn zeppelin?
>
>Cheers
>John Wayman
>
In the far-off days of the "heady" 1960's I became aware of a BIG sign at the south (employee and uni student .... me latter) end of Redfern, which in neatly painted cursive script said something like this....

 

In order to obviate the necessity for employees to cross the tracks the footbridge has been proveded  for the benefit of all concerned. Failure to utilse the footbridge rather than crossing the tracks will incur a penalty of 5 pounds. By order chief mechanical engineer.

 

As it was already past 1966 when pounds had ceased, I kept on saying to myself..... must have a photo of that sign before it gets converted to decimal and worse. Conversion from railwayese circa 1933 would surely be comtemporaneous with the decimal conversion of the penalty. and no sign writer then extant could emulate the cursive script.... it would be done in sans serif (we would now say Arial) font with letraset.

 

Then one day I had organised (a) myself out of bed early enough (b) found the camera (c) cleared the mind of whatever substances were cheap the night before and (d) got on the train and was hot to trot when I arrived at Redfern.

 

You guessed it.... the sedate black cursive script on orange had been replaced with a stark black and white sans serif sign which said (probably still does)......

 

Employees must use footbridge. Penalty for crossing tracks 20 dollars.

 

Cursive is a close description of what I did next. Also note inflationary consequences of decimalisation.

 

Did anybody out there take a photo of the cursive script sign before vandalisation?