Newport is awful for the community, Clifton hill as well from my memory and yes – Sunshine is another horrible example. They are particularly bad infrastructure for the people that actually live there. Are borderline hostile to pedestrians and their design lends itself to the areas becoming a highway in the middle of community centres.

I’ve got a feeling that back in the late 1950s organised ‘NIMBY’ groups didn’t exist, which was the reason there wasn’t any blowback – anti-freeway activism didn’t take off until the 1970s.

Any idea if there would be that many complaints if the four grade separations you mentioned had been done before they were surrounded by buildings?

At that time, we had more level crossings that today. I believe we did have the money and resources to grade separate a lot of level crossings during the 1970s, but we instead put it into freeways such as the Tullamarine, Eastern and South Eastern.

And here is another example where the manual operation was at an advantage: Most of our level crossings (more than 180) had proper gates which barred the railway when open to road traffic. At crossings with roads with footpaths, there were also wicket gates with manual locks. When a train was due, the signalman or gatekeeper would wait for a gap in the road traffic and then swing round the gates, and then locking the wicket gates after the pedestrian crossing was clear.*

Because the person operating these gates could see the crossing, and checked before locking them, these did not need emergency exits. It because of this and because the main gates covered the full road width when not baring the railway that level crossings worked in this way did not need bells or alarms.

But we had so many level crossings that this was expensive, and the solution was to replace nearly all these gates by lifting barriers that closed a pre-programmed amount of time after two red lights start flashing alternately and bell starts sounding, and the wicket gates by crib crossings and later pedestrian gates or pedestrian boom barriers, these being programmed to close a certain time after the level crossing is activated and they needed emergency exits too!

One could argue the graffiti vandals are already painting the concrete road overbridges for us! 😛

Perhaps we could paint them in such a way as to make them look better?

The efficiency of the old mechanical interlocking compared to the new computer based systems might have something to do with it: in the old days the signalman could look out the window and see where everything was, and had enough flexibility to route trains in a way he thought was most efficient. Today everything is remotely operated from a dark windowless control room.

Another thing to consider is dwell times: once upon a time able bodied passengers could jump out an open door while the train was still rolling into the platform, and trains would depart as soon as the doors looked clear. Today passengers need to wait for the doors to be released on arrival at the station, and the train can’t leave until the last passenger has stopped forcing the doors open.

Thanks for you response Marcus, but Melbourne’s trains used to carry far more people than they do now and I expect there were more trains and all the trains came into the only city station, Flinders Street. Yes, there was a wait in the yards at times, but it is quite remarkable how well the system used to work compared to now.