Surrey Hills - another crossing failure

["Roderick Smith" <rodsmith@werple.net.au>]

I was e-mailed that this morning's failure made the radio news.
When I left home the booms at Union Rd had been down for some time.  Cars
were banked back to north of Mont Albert Rd, and some were u turning when
the opportunity arose.
At an open day of a local control centre I was told that these booms fail
at least once per week.

This crossing is first out of Melbourne on this line, and is the busiest
(in terms of train movements) in Melbourne.  The crossing should have been
eliminated in the early 70s when the third line was being built, but the
cheapskate goverment proposed doing this via an obtrusive overpass (bad for
the local community, as well as inefficient).  Lowering the railway would
have eliminated two level crossings for the price of one, but this wasn't
done.

-- 
Regards
Roderick Smith
Rail News Victoria Editor