line to craigieburn

Annoyingly we didn't get it together sufficiently to make it to Craigieburn station at 10:30 this morning for the official opening. But we did get to Roxburgh Park to see a little bit of behind-the-scenes John Brumby excitement when the Premier plus Lynne Kosky boarded the train going north (this is how they 'arrived at the official opening by train' as per The Age 1 Oct 07 p. 4 - rode a few km of line) .


A couple of boys were there and though I didn't hear the initial statement from one, I heard the reply, 'Nah, Brumby's already got a ticket!' And indeed he did, and validated it twice for the cameras (he volunteered to do it a second time, which in my experience gets a bad result from the validator, but I'm not the Premier).



On the station he just hung out with his crew though he did try to talk with real people i.e. the same boys, he asked them if they were going into the city to see something or other and was surprised (?) to hear they were actually just there because he was and/or the rail line to Craigieburn was being opened.



The station itself is stylistically interesting, a kind of brutalo-



modernistic



style, though as Mia pointed out the shelters on the platform were too high for effective protection from anything, and there wasn't much wind shielding either.

That said I am very pleased the electrified line has extended to C'burn and I think a lot of locals will be too. It's been at least 40 years in the making, or rather, it was first announced in the late 60s and probably not much was done until the present government or a version thereof did it, and hats off to all included, including of course Bettsy.