MELBOURNE TRAMS

Melbourne trams in Acland Street,St Kilda. St Kilda is a vibrant, palm-lined beachside suburb located just 6 kilometres southeast of Melbourne's CBD. Famous for its cosmopolitan atmosphere, it serves as the city's seaside playground, offering a mix of iconic entertainment, historic architecture, diverse dining, and natural attractions.

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MELBOURNE TRAM

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IN THE CITY

Elizabeth Street, looking South towards Finders Street and the Flinders Street Train Station.

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CITY VIEW

The sculpture on Spencer Street in front of the Grand Hotel is a Melbourne public art installation called "Raising the Rattler Pole—The Last of the Connie's" by artist David Bell. Located at the corner of Flinders and Spencer Streets, the 1:1 scale replica is a tribute to the iconic W-class "rattler" trams (see one in action below main photos). The sculpture features a black tram playfully and significantly upended with its rear pointing upwards, a social comment perhaps on the advent of automated ticketing and the abolishment of the human "connie" (tram conductor and ticket issuer).

I took the photo from a moving train going towards the Southern Cross Station.

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MELBOURNE TRAM

A visit to Melbourne would not be complete without riding on the trams, one of the city's modes of public transport. The tramway network is centred around the Melbourne central business district (CBD) and consists of 1,763 tram stops across 24 routes, with 493 trams and 250 kilometres of double tram track which served a patronage of 206 million over the year 2017-2018. It is the largest operational urban tram network in the world and one of the most used. Trams are the second most utilised form of public transport in Melbourne after the city's metropolitan commuter railway network.

Here is an E-class tram which is a three-section, four-bogie articulated trams that was first introduced to the Melbourne tram network in 2013, built at the Dandenong rolling stock factory of Bombardier Transportation (later Alstom) with the propulsion systems and bogies coming from Bombardier/Alstom factories in Germany.

Note that in Australia we drive on the left side of the road and we use kilometres.

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WINTER TRAM

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THE WAY OF PROGRESS...

At Bridge Rd, Richmond, a "new" tram wheels down the road and Victorian brick shops look on, surprised at nothing anymore, ever since they were dwarfed by the utilitarian apartment buildings behind them.

 

"We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive." - C. S. Lewis

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IN THE CITY

After the cold, wet, windy, stormy weather we've had the past few days, people were advised to work from home if they could. This is certainly a very sparse-looking City streetscape early in the morning, which means that many people did indeed stay away. Gave me the willies, as it brought back memories of COVID lockdowns...

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MALVERN TOWN HALL

Malvern Town Hall is the former town hall of the municipality of Malvern in the state of Victoria, Australia. It is the seat of the local government area of the City of Stonnington. The Second Empire and Italianate style Victorian era building is located on the northeast corner of Glenferrie Road and High Street, in Malvern.

The foundation stone of the Malvern Shire Hall was laid by the Hon. Alfred Deakin, the Minister of Public Works, on 22 September 1885. Heritage Victoria describes the Malvern Town Hall as aesthetically and historically significant. It is an extraordinary and essentially intact example of a building of its type, having two towers. The building demonstrates a changing sequence of styles from the Late Victorian Boom period to interwar Adamesque. The use of marble and terrazzo in the foyers and the plaster Adamesque ornamentation in the hall is of note.

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