Drivers eye view, City Loop to Upfield, 1988 

That stretch between North Melbourne and Flemington Bridge is practically unrecognizable nowadays thank to Citylink.

It was just wonderful for me to see scenes from 1988. The cars I saw at crossings brought back memories, too. Thanks!

Loved it!! I was 10 back then growing up in melbourne. Fantastic train journey. Sad too, nostalgic. Grew up on the Hurstbridge Line, Greensborough/Monty/Eltham off and on there predominantly.

Wow - I think I counted 26 levels crossings on that journey. Many of which were hand operated too! Merry Xmas driver667 and thanks for a wonderful year!!

Fabulous. A Christmas Day special! Love the gate system too.

Wow. That was a blast from the past. None of that looks like that anymore. Thanks for sharing.

It’s great to see such old footage. How things have changed. That crossing where the horn was just used. Wow

It’s cool to look back and now compare how much it’s changed

Cool. Quite good quality I have been watching a few of these videos lately. The biggest difference was they were still using jointed track No road gates or barriers for the last few stations Coburg is unrecognizable

Merry Christmas! Love the thumbnail with the Coldstream Train; Bring back our railways!

Very nice to see this. I didn't make the effort to travel this line (by rail or even road) to see it before the 'upgrade', which I now realise was a mistake. :( I've actually not been on it since either. However, the loop footage is very similar to some that I got in 1991/92. I travelled the Belgrave and Epping lines in Comeng and Hitachi cabs. So I intend to digitise all that for upload in the new year. Several platforms were being cut back at the time for the then new 4D set.

Merry Christmas Driver 666 i have enjoyed watching these tapes each day have a safe 2024 keep up the great work.

Merry Christmas. Really, really old footage and I like it.

I was in Melbourne May 1987 but didn't have time to take local trains (I was just between long-distance trains). There was Spencer St station back then. Cheers from Vancouver.

Omg, North Melbourne station looks very different compared to now!

I usually pass upfield and the fact that those barry road shops connecting to sydeny road are still there are surreal. There is a turkish kebab shop there (Katik Kebabs) and it never really came to my head how old the building is.

Merry Christmas to you and your family!

I could have been the Guard on this train, the odds are against it, but one never knows heh! Seeing Ardern Street and Macaulay sidings after a very long time!! Used to dock trains out of Macaulay in the afternoons. We had to go into the Staff center to get the road number for our dock, the toilet adjoining the meal room there had some graffiti on the door, "Blue Danube male massage parlor", that always made me laugh!

This will make a great comparison video for when the Upfield line becomes Skyrail from Coburg to Park Street at Parkville 😁😁😁. PS enjoyed the video - I was 18 in that year and had my 1st job at Commonwealth Bank Sydney Road and Albert St Brunswick and would take a train from Gowrie each morning.

They also wanted to close the upfield line and replace it with a light rail line at around that time but decided to postpone it because of the government having spent too much already on the St Kilda and Port Melbourne light rail conversions in a time when a recession was imminent. However it was a good thing the government never closed the line as ridership boomed on the line in the early 1990s during the recession in response to excessively high fuel prices at the time.

Can you organise new footage of the present day journey from city loop to Upfield soon. I would like to see what has changed. Why is the a single track from Gowrie to Upfield. Double tracks to Upfield with an extra platform at Upfield and a diamond crossover would allow down trains to terminate at either platform. Up trains could start from either platform and use the crossover to commence the return trip to Flinders Street.

Omg Gowrie station, don’t activate the boom gates, then a man walks in front of your train 🤣. And talk about being ahead of the times, filming a video for YT 25+ years ago… no one would’ve believed you back then that you’d actually post it on this thing called the internet lol. Merry Christmas 👍

Things have changed alot through the 80s like gates on the rail track even Citylink bridge didn't exist when the footage happened and also the metropolitan freeway sydney road to Greensborough yet to exist until nearly 40 years later things have evolved quickly

Love all the crossing attendants huts, would they be classified by the National Trust??? Did you have to hold the camera while driving the train??? Box Forest Road crossing was very primitive in those days, you had to wait for the cars to see you and you press the horn continuously before they let you through......

Hello all Merry Christmas. Mister conductor ^^,your familly, and Australian people ,peace on Earth. Hello from your cat too,"".Yann to France.

Wow this is very cool!!! You wouldn’t happen to have anymore cab views from the 80s ?? Even if not this is still very cool

I remember the Upfield line in the 1980s😊

awesome

Seems like only the bottom 2 notes of the RVB horn were blowing

Just watching the video again cause I thought I did see and watching confirmed it - at 22:33 in the video is the semaphore on Red?

Old Melbourne, the Melbourne I grew up in.

Well today is Christmas Day, like I said once before, here today and gone tomorrow, Enjoy

WOW!!! I'm very impressed you were able to get this footage. I love older footage of what the Melbourne train lines used to be like, particularly in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s. How did you come by it? And whereabouts does it start from exactly? I'm blind so I can't see where.

Did you use to like Trains when you were a kid Colin..?😊

6:03 Was I the only one looking at this moment and for a second was like "Oh sh...🚈💥🚈" 🤣

25:40 Interesting that you had to stop short of Box Forest Rd for some reason considering the platform at Gowrie was free ??

I bet you'd wished you'd cleaned the windscreen in hindsight now after all these years 😉

Interesting, hardly anything automated. Wooden barrier crossings, some roads don't have barriers. The aborigine running in front of the train at 27 minutes, very basic infratructure with stations and many unsheltered. Nothing like that in my first visit to Melbourne in Jan 2006, they must have done some serious upgrading between then and 2006.

Merry Christmas 🚂

Well this is a blast from the past ❤🍀 Is this a tait train, Sometimes I hear a bell from the guard me tinks?

Thank you for the old footage and its good to see how everything was before everything was modernised. You can't beat a old school semaphore signal in the footage. What is that bell which rings two times in the comeng train before it takes off? And and you still driving trains today?

The Met Comeng

Dose the city loop still run

What was the safeworking system from merlynston to gowrie & gowrie to upfield

26:58 Omg! What was that idiot thinking? He'd risk his life crossing in front of a train instead of waiting for only 20 seconds?

Casino 🎰 🎰 Royale Park.. A bridge over Flemington

Were you driving it in this video?

What a Clown at Gowrie station 🤬

Love the bell before tooting the horn, really old school. Macaulay station is unrecognisable from now with the freeway going over it, and what about the semaphore signals, really old school, and also the clickety clack of the short tracks not like the continuous track of today...... 🚋🚋🚋🚋🚋🚋🚋🚋