Re: Surrey Hills - another crossing failure II

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

Several people e-mailed me to state that last week's failure was of a
train, not the crossing as such.  The result was the same: traffic banked
back to major crossroads.

On Wed.12.5, the crossing had failed again.  Traffic was banked back.  As I
drove past at 8.15, cars were wiggling though the boom barriers.  It is not
hard to understand their frustration.

Long after Surrey Hills and Mont Albert did not have their crossings
eliminated, minor Watsonia had its railway lowered to eliminate a level
crossing.  The grateful council then sealed off the road and turned the
bridge into a carpark.

-- 
Regards
Roderick Smith
Rail News Victoria Editor

> 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.