Robbie

Sadly, flexibility is over-rated and over costed and thus doesn’t get a look in. The goal is to straight rail EVERYTHING and hope we have less problems.

Under the guise of rationalisation the Flinders Street “ladder track” was booked out over three years ago, but still in place. Slowly but surely everything is getting pulled out, but then they go and surprise by putting in a new crossover at down end of Heidelberg.

William – In a state of perplexion

From:tramsdownunder@... [mailto:tramsdownunder@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Robbie Smith
Sent: Thursday, 16 May 2019 3:44 PM
To:tramsdownunder@...
Subject: Re: [TramsDownUnder] Caulfield Trackwork Diagram

Neat. It's a shame that these diagrams are quite difficult to track down these days since the Signal Diagrams and Photos website shut down.

Almost none of the Victorian railway manuals are available, which is in stark contrast to NSW, where almost everything except Train Order forms is published on the railsafe website. Both the Driver's Route Knowledge Diagrams and the WPPD publicly available on the railsafe website if you know where to look. I suspect though that NSW is an outlier in this regard, as Queensland doesn't publish much, nor do WA and SA (though signal diagrams for them can be found via sa-trackandsignal.net).

Regarding the actual track layout, if it were up to me I'd relay it with a pair of crossovers just down of the junction on both branches, replace the single- and double- slip points with standard crossovers rated at 65 km/h, and configure all lines to be bidirectional. Signals CFD729 and CFD769 are largely redundant. Attached is a quick sketch; I couldn't be bothered to work out the correct dimensions though I imagine it would fit just fine. My modifications allow movements from any track to reach any platform, and vice-versa, maintaining maximum operational flexibility for a minimum of components. The three crossovers in red are possibly surplus to requirements, but they provide a bit of redundancy and avoid potential conflicts.

(I'm aware that the crossovers on the Frankston branch would need to be curved, but that's a non-issue and Victoria's almost pathalogical avoidance of them is absurd. Again, if it works in Switzerland it would work here.)

Robbie

On Tue, 2019-05-14 at 19:24 +1000, 'Richard Youl' via TramsDownUnder wrote:

The top portion is the city side of Caulfield station, the lower portion is the Dandenong and Frankston side.

As there is trackwork to enable Dandenong trains access to and from the Frankston tracks, access also on the outer side of the station would be somewhat unnecessary.

It’s funny what falls off the back of a truck sometimes.

Regards,