OK, ultimately this is all about security, privacy and copyright – those
dogged old fashioned concepts from last century. In essence we are perhaps
just a few technological steps away from a complete and utter loss of our
physical control over images, sounds, thoughts and ideas. Physical
manifestations of science, art, craft or thought have up to recently
provided a reliable means by which we can control – and often profit by –
our creativity. However the digital world has steadily chipped away at the
necessity for a physical presence for our art. Recorded music, like words
and images, is now transmissable without regard for – or containment on – a
discrete physical object. And whilst we still “need” an object to “play”
the art on, the cost and size of that object is diminishing as rapidly as
our disregard for copyright. Increasingly we have to wield a big stick to
protect from theft things which don’t naturally feel “stealable”. When you
can do it so easily, quickly and simply, without leaving home and without
taking someone else’s physical “property”, it no longer feels “wrong”. It’s
just a soft copy, after all.

Now we can all see good and bad in this, and we can all see that there’s a
growing mismatch between the virtual and “real” worlds. And as
copyright-owners we could fight against copyright “theft” whilst feeling
“right” about our position, needing to eat and pay for housing as we do.
But what about tomorrow? What if the physical barriers continue to erode?
What if convergence, connectivity and miniaturisation lead us to a state
where everything is captured, remembered and shared, just by default?

I recently commented on the rise of a global human connectedness via a
convergence of our mobile devices, the internet and embedded image
capturing devices. In essence this is something new for geographically
dispersed humanity – that we can be somewhere, almost anywhere on the
planet, have a thought or experience – good or bad – and share it globally
as voice, text or image. Or as any form of data, really. That mass human
connectedness may (to cite a few possibilities) breakdown social, political
and economic barriers; subject our leaders and authority figures to a new
level of poular critique; or create a ‘Lithium state’ where the banal and
the merely average will rule. (Daily Telegraph readers will recognise that
state.) I’m sure there are many more options here and I certainly don’t
know all of the possible outcomes. I’ll leave you to think of some more.
What I would like to do now is throw another thought into the mix – that we
are entering a new, powerful era of connected common – as in shared –
memory. Memory that doesn’t get forgotten, doesn’t go away and doesn’t take
much effort to retrieve. I would go so far as to suggest that the
combination of stored thoughts, expressions and experiences with our
aforementioned mass connectedness will lead to a new type of shared
(perhaps ‘pseudo’ or ‘meta’?) human consciousness. Simply, a
hyper-awareness of a larger “self” beyond our own narrow vision. Hmm,
that’s not so simple either, is it? It may not even be desirable. Not that
we will have any choice, it will just arrive. The rock, having been pushed,
is rolling downhill.

So just how does this pseudo-hyper-meta human consciousness come about?
Just work backwards with me for a moment. Think ‘pre-book’. Human written
language existed prior to the book of course, but there was an explosion of
thought – and of the communication of thoughts – that came about because of
the sheer (relative) ease with which thoughts, ideas and explanations could
be stored on a physical page and accurately communicated across distances.
If you like, imagine yourself further back in time, before there was a
written language. We may have etched the odd number on a tablet for
accounting (or taxation) purposes but we had no way to write down what we
thought, or to document a simple ‘how-to’. We could talk about it, of
course, and pass it on – but error (good or bad) was inevitable (as shown
by the well-known “Chinese whispers” exercise). Of course we had ways and
means to minimise those errors, memory aids if you like, but essentially we
had to learn a narrative by rote before we could pass it on, Illiad-syle.
And if your verbal language skills weren’t too flash then you relied on
others to do the job, and to intepret what was meant. So it was inevitably
filtered, distorted and controlled information. Now come back to this
century and look at how we are changing our world, step-by-step. Firstly,
we are generally better educated and by and large can read and write. We
can just about all read – perhaps even write – entire books, if we so
choose. (And apologies to those who can’t, who may have a disability by
birth or circumstance, or live in a situation where basic education isn’t a
given.) Now layer on top of that the connectedness we have achieved
already, the mobility and the access to data. We can use that connectedness
for any purpose, of course, but what I wish to explore is the prospect of
accurate hyper-access to a vastly increased scope of information. Never
before in human history have we been able to access our “written” (or
saved, if you like) word, our accumulated wealth of knowledge, so readily,
so easily, wherever we may be. That alone will accelerate human
technological – and possibly social – development. We have stepped well
outside of our genome and into a wider phenotypical world of extended
ability and influence.

OK, that’s all a given, isn’t it? Big deal. But step forward to a brave new
world where every step we take is recorded in sound and vision. Where our
entire lives (possibly excepting – possibly – personal moments of our
choosing) are recorded and stored for later analysis. Our patterns of
behaviour, our thoughts, our art, our expression – kept for good. Not
filtered, enhanced and written down in a book but simply recorded,
unchanged, and made available upon request. Whilst much of our lives will
presumably be subject to some restriction and made “offlimits” to wider
analysis, our public steps will be broadly available. Our work, our
hobbies, our inventions, our preferences, our habits, our perspectives –
all observed and recorded. We see this trend already reflected in the
growth of stored knowledge and meta-data on the World Wide Web. We see the
possibilities that come about with crowd-sourcing, effectively putting the
masses to work, with or without pay, Wiki-style. We see the social media
revolution, capturing our lives bit-by-bit. We see GPS and camera
technology embedded in laptops, cell phones and bike hemets. We see the
cloud, convergence and miniaturisation. Add it all up. Everything connects
and converges into smaller, shared devices that we quite literally wear, or
at least carry around. That’s just a step or 2 away from bio-embedded
technology and constant, pervasive data capture.

It used to be that security-conscious bodies (especially large corporates
and defence establishments) simply banned cameras and cell phones from
their premises. But cell phones became a business necessity, so they had to
come in. And now it’s difficult to buy a cell phone without a camera, so
they are in too, even if by stealth. But what happens when we ourselves
save all of our vision, all our audio – all of what we do – to local
electronic memory, or to cloud, with every step we take? It may sound
slightly weird, but it becomes less strange with every generation of
ever-more-powerful personal memory device. As our converged, location-aware
smart-camera-phone shrinks to watch-size, or becomes simply part of your
sunglasses frame, so it becomes expected. Why not converge all devices onto
contact lenses? Why not simply embed in our bodies a chip that transmits
and receives signals from sensors anywhere in or on our body? And make that
data available to others?

Some of this will just happen. Some products will be outlawed. But this
converged connectedness will happen to a greater rather than lesser degree;
it may lead to a new meta-conscious state where ideas are shared
exponentially, and it may provoke a security and privacy backlash. Indeed
perfect, highly retrievable and super-communicated memory will certainly
test our copyright laws. If you can hear or look at it, it’s copied to the
cloud, immediately. Some people will chose not to transmit, but many more
will like to share. How will Rupert Murdoch put a wall around that?

OK, ultimately this is all about security, privacy and copyright – those
dogged old fashioned concepts from last century. In essence we are perhaps
just a few technological steps away from a complete and utter loss of our
physical control over images, sounds, thoughts and ideas. Physical
manifestations of science, art, craft or thought have up to recently
provided a reliable means by which we can control – and often profit by –
our creativity. However the digital world has steadily chipped away at the
necessity for a physical presence for our art. Recorded music, like words
and images, is now transmissable without regard for – or containment on – a
discrete physical object. And whilst we still “need” an object to “play”
the art on, the cost and size of that object is diminishing as rapidly as
our disregard for copyright. Increasingly we have to wield a big stick to
protect from theft things which don’t naturally feel “stealable”. When you
can do it so easily, quickly and simply, without leaving home and without
taking someone else’s physical “property”, it no longer feels “wrong”. It’s
just a soft copy, after all.

Now we can all see good and bad in this, and we can all see that there’s a
growing mismatch between the virtual and “real” worlds. And as
copyright-owners we could fight against copyright “theft” whilst feeling
“right” about our position, needing to eat and pay for housing as we do.
But what about tomorrow? What if the physical barriers continue to erode?
What if convergence, connectivity and miniaturisation lead us to a state
where everything is captured, remembered and shared, just by default?

I recently commented on the rise of a global human connectedness via a
convergence of our mobile devices, the internet and embedded image
capturing devices. In essence this is something new for geographically
dispersed humanity – that we can be somewhere, almost anywhere on the
planet, have a thought or experience – good or bad – and share it globally
as voice, text or image. Or as any form of data, really. That mass human
connectedness may (to cite a few possibilities) breakdown social, political
and economic barriers; subject our leaders and authority figures to a new
level of poular critique; or create a ‘Lithium state’ where the banal and
the merely average will rule. (Daily Telegraph readers will recognise that
state.) I’m sure there are many more options here and I certainly don’t
know all of the possible outcomes. I’ll leave you to think of some more.
What I would like to do now is throw another thought into the mix – that we
are entering a new, powerful era of connected common – as in shared –
memory. Memory that doesn’t get forgotten, doesn’t go away and doesn’t take
much effort to retrieve. I would go so far as to suggest that the
combination of stored thoughts, expressions and experiences with our
aforementioned mass connectedness will lead to a new type of shared
(perhaps ‘pseudo’ or ‘meta’?) human consciousness. Simply, a
hyper-awareness of a larger “self” beyond our own narrow vision. Hmm,
that’s not so simple either, is it? It may not even be desirable. Not that
we will have any choice, it will just arrive. The rock, having been pushed,
is rolling downhill.

So just how does this pseudo-hyper-meta human consciousness come about?
Just work backwards with me for a moment. Think ‘pre-book’. Human written
language existed prior to the book of course, but there was an explosion of
thought – and of the communication of thoughts – that came about because of
the sheer (relative) ease with which thoughts, ideas and explanations could
be stored on a physical page and accurately communicated across distances.
If you like, imagine yourself further back in time, before there was a
written language. We may have etched the odd number on a tablet for
accounting (or taxation) purposes but we had no way to write down what we
thought, or to document a simple ‘how-to’. We could talk about it, of
course, and pass it on – but error (good or bad) was inevitable (as shown
by the well-known “Chinese whispers” exercise). Of course we had ways and
means to minimise those errors, memory aids if you like, but essentially we
had to learn a narrative by rote before we could pass it on, Illiad-syle.
And if your verbal language skills weren’t too flash then you relied on
others to do the job, and to intepret what was meant. So it was inevitably
filtered, distorted and controlled information. Now come back to this
century and look at how we are changing our world, step-by-step. Firstly,
we are generally better educated and by and large can read and write. We
can just about all read – perhaps even write – entire books, if we so
choose. (And apologies to those who can’t, who may have a disability by
birth or circumstance, or live in a situation where basic education isn’t a
given.) Now layer on top of that the connectedness we have achieved
already, the mobility and the access to data. We can use that connectedness
for any purpose, of course, but what I wish to explore is the prospect of
accurate hyper-access to a vastly increased scope of information. Never
before in human history have we been able to access our “written” (or
saved, if you like) word, our accumulated wealth of knowledge, so readily,
so easily, wherever we may be. That alone will accelerate human
technological – and possibly social – development. We have stepped well
outside of our genome and into a wider phenotypical world of extended
ability and influence.

OK, that’s all a given, isn’t it? Big deal. But step forward to a brave new
world where every step we take is recorded in sound and vision. Where our
entire lives (possibly excepting – possibly – personal moments of our
choosing) are recorded and stored for later analysis. Our patterns of
behaviour, our thoughts, our art, our expression – kept for good. Not
filtered, enhanced and written down in a book but simply recorded,
unchanged, and made available upon request. Whilst much of our lives will
presumably be subject to some restriction and made “offlimits” to wider
analysis, our public steps will be broadly available. Our work, our
hobbies, our inventions, our preferences, our habits, our perspectives –
all observed and recorded. We see this trend already reflected in the
growth of stored knowledge and meta-data on the World Wide Web. We see the
possibilities that come about with crowd-sourcing, effectively putting the
masses to work, with or without pay, Wiki-style. We see the social media
revolution, capturing our lives bit-by-bit. We see GPS and camera
technology embedded in laptops, cell phones and bike hemets. We see the
cloud, convergence and miniaturisation. Add it all up. Everything connects
and converges into smaller, shared devices that we quite literally wear, or
at least carry around. That’s just a step or 2 away from bio-embedded
technology and constant, pervasive data capture.

It used to be that security-conscious bodies (especially large corporates
and defence establishments) simply banned cameras and cell phones from
their premises. But cell phones became a business necessity, so they had to
come in. And now it’s difficult to buy a cell phone without a camera, so
they are in too, even if by stealth. But what happens when we ourselves
save all of our vision, all our audio – all of what we do – to local
electronic memory, or to cloud, with every step we take? It may sound
slightly weird, but it becomes less strange with every generation of
ever-more-powerful personal memory device. As our converged, location-aware
smart-camera-phone shrinks to watch-size, or becomes simply part of your
sunglasses frame, so it becomes expected. Why not converge all devices onto
contact lenses? Why not simply embed in our bodies a chip that transmits
and receives signals from sensors anywhere in or on our body? And make that
data available to others?

Some of this will just happen. Some products will be outlawed. But this
converged connectedness will happen to a greater rather than lesser degree;
it may lead to a new meta-conscious state where ideas are shared
exponentially, and it may provoke a security and privacy backlash. Indeed
perfect, highly retrievable and super-communicated memory will certainly
test our copyright laws. If you can hear or look at it, it’s copied to the
cloud, immediately. Some people will chose not to transmit, but many more
will like to share. How will Rupert Murdoch put a wall around that?

I’m not exactly sure what this guy was trying to do, but it was worth taking a shot. He (or perhaps she?) is either climbing out of their shell, or having felt the 40 degree C heat is getting back in. There’s another possibility I’d rather not consider, of course, and I’ll leave that to your imagination.

I’m not exactly sure what this guy was trying to do, but it was worth taking a shot. He (or perhaps she?) is either climbing out of their shell, or having felt the 40 degree C heat is getting back in. There’s another possibility I’d rather not consider, of course, and I’ll leave that to your imagination.

USB Guitar snake_0259

Originally uploaded by gtveloce

This USB ‘light snake’ is an alternative (and possibly cheaper) way to get your guitar signal into your PC.

M-Audio K61es MIDI controller_0258

Originally uploaded by gtveloce

An alternative to software keyboards is this MIDI controller that recently landed in my collection of gadgets. MIDI-out via USB to PC where I use Reaper or Mixcraft (amongst others) to play with the sound. It’s powered by the 5V USB output, so it’s very easy to connect. Just select ‘USB device’ in your software preferences and away you go.

USB Guitar Link_0260a

Originally uploaded by gtveloce

For those who are interested in such things, I use a Behringer GuitarLink USB cable to link my Strat with my PC, using various software ‘amplifiers’ to get the right sound. On the PC I record to a WAV file and mix it in Mixcraft or Reaper. Quick and simple.

The service is quite good here_0269
Originally uploaded by gtveloce

The service is quite good here_0269
Originally uploaded by gtveloce

This could be a very long post, or a very short one if I get bored of the task. But if history matters at all, and it may not, it’s worth looking at who did what to stall or enhance the NSW railways over the medium to longer term. We could then draw meaningless conclusions about what the encumbents or pretenders may or may not do…

And I should say right now that we have to look at context, too. Railway line closures have been going on for a very long time, just as Sydney’s (and Newcastle’s) extensive tram network grew and declined over decades (but it was Heffron for Labor who finally pulled the pin on Sydney’s real light rail system). You can’t blame Labor alone – in fact the Liberal Premiers have a slight lead in the ‘rail closures’ game overall – however you can accuse both major parties of an over-eager opportunism. Flood damage can be a great excuse to close a line, for example. But glib analysis ignores the elephant in the room: the motor lobby, and it’s venal, self-interested cohorts. If anyone – or any thing – is to blame, it’s the motor vehicle. Truck and car competition, fostered and lobbied by car makers, pro-car organisations and the oil companies, has been intense over the last 60 years or so. Money that could – perhaps should – have gone into improved public transport was used instead to subsidise road building. First it was sealed roads, then bigger roads, straighter roads, wider roads. Our appetite for roads seemingly knows no bounds.

And people – voters – actively chose to buy cars, house them in little boxes on their increasingly remotely-sited land and use them, “proving” that continued investment in rail was not in the short term interests of citizens or their elected representatives. You can blame the old media, too, for their glorification of subsidised personal car transport and self-interest in selling car-related adspace. Blame who you like, but we are all complicit in this crime.

So here goes… and E&OE, I’ll do the best I can but you will have to check it out for yourself to be certain!
First of all – and my personal favourite in so many ways – is the Parramatta to Castle Hill line (it began as a steam tram, but later there were platforms and a direct connection with the main western railway). It actually continued onto Rogans Hill (from Castle Hill). It was closed in 1932 due to poor patronage. Jack Lang pulled the plug on this one, for Labor. Imagine if we’d have kept and developed that line. But people just didn’t use it, so you can understand why it was closed.

Some lines were closed formally by an Act of Parliament. At least they are clear-cut examples. They include:

• Ballina closed 1948 - McGirr Labor. Due to landslides.
• Westby closed 1952 – McGirr Labor.
• Richmond to Kurrajong closed 1952 – Cahill Labor. Unprofitable, flood damage (you can see plenty of remains beside the main road if you look for it).
• Morpeth closed 1953 – Cahill Labor. Due to siltation of the Hunter and Morpeth’s decline.
• Kunama (Batlow) closed 1957 – Cahill Labor.
• Taralga closed 1957 – Cahill Labor.
• Camden closed 1963 – Heffron (hey, they named a park after him) Labor. Coal trade moved elsewhere. Imagine if we’d kept this one, too? Again, leftovers are visible for the keen-eyed.
• Dorrigo closed 1993 – Fahey Liberal, suspended for a long time previously but still under a Liberal leader. Unprofitable, washaways.

Some lines are just “disused”, even though they may or may not have rail and sleepers, stations, platforms and bridges in place. You see these all around NSW – just look out your window as you drive around country NSW and look for raised embankments, fences, bridges and culverts where you don’t expect to see ‘em. According to this recent – and somewhat emotive – SMH article there are 58 such disused lines.

I’m not sure what is counted amongst that 58, but here’s what I can find:

• Inverell branch (to Moree) – progressively closed ’87 (Unsworth, Labor) to ’94 (Fahey, Liberal)
• Burcher branch – closed (maybe) between ’72 (Askin, Liberal) to ’75 (Lewis, Liberal)
• Corowa – closed ’75 (Lewis, Liberal)
• Kywong – closed ’75 (Lewis, Liberal)
• Rand branch – closed ’75 (Lewis, Liberal)
• Rankin Springs – closed ’75 (Lewis, Liberal)
• Tocumwal branch – closed ’75 (Lewis, Liberal)
• Tumbarumba – damaged by floods in 1974, not repaired (Askin, Liberal) and remainder closed in ’87 (Unsworth, Labour)
• Tumut – damaged by floods in 1984, not repaired (Wran, Labor) but already on its way out in ’75 (Lewis, Liberal)
• Unanderra-Moss Vale – stations closed ’75, ’76 (Askin, Lewis, Willis, all Liberal) but line open
• Yass Branch – closed ’58 (Cahill, Labor)
• Brewarrina – closed after flooding in ’74 (Askin, Liberal)
• Coolah – progressively closed from ’75 (Lewis, Liberal) to last train in ’82 (Wran, Labor)
• Molong-Dubbo – progressively closed, much of it in ’74 (Askin, Liberal) and finally and completely by ’87 (Unsworth, Labor). I looked at this one in 2009, pretty well taken apart now
• Oberon – closed 1980 (Wran, Labor) but station closures earlier (Askin, Liberal)

There are more but circumstances (like mine closures) make it obvious that they would close anyway. Indeed if you take the emotion and politics out of it, many lines just lose their reason for being – for example if a mill or a mine closes. Or if trucks take away the business. You can’t blame Liberal or Labor for that, unless you see their weakness in the face of oil-fueled transport lobby groups, populous fuel tax policy and the like as their fault. Which of course it is. Every time we give in to the oil lobby and lower or limit the tax on petrol or diesel at the pump we are killing off the rail system. 10 years of Federal Liberal government under John Howard can certainly take some of the blame here with singularly populous politicking on fuel pricing, but Labor can be just as weak-kneed when it comes to the crunch. Let alone the Greens, unashamedly politicking on the issue.

We could, after all, simply keep all the infrastructure and use and maintain it at huge ongoing cost, or mothball it at a lesser cost. The hidden cost is what we can’t do with that locked-up capital. Or we can sell it off, raise more cash and redirect it into other public services. That’s the game in play that the media, the Liberals and the Greens are playing silly games over.

And then there’s the Eastern Suburbs line. Started under engineer Bradfield in 1926, it was stopped by Depression and World War. Originally planned to extend from Town Hall to Bondi Junction before heading south through Randwick and the University of NSW, most of it just got dropped. It was restarted in ’47 and abandoned in ’52 (both decisions by Labor). Restarted again in ’67 (Askin, Liberal) and reviewed and shortened in ’76 (Wran, Labor). And “completed”, if that’s the word, by Wran in ’79. Now if we had kept the trams (stopped in 1961, under Heffron for Labor) then the route-shortening may have made some sense. Now it just looks like bad planning. That’s hindsight for you, though. It’s worth noting that a spur was proposed to Bondi in 1999 but it was heavily lobbied against by the residents of Bondi, presumably because the utility of the rail system for them was undermined by the increased ease by which more people could travel from faraway parts of Sydney to visit Bondi Beach. That’s People Power at work.

Much of the info above was found at a couple of sites, well worth exploring at the links below.
Railway status references:
http://www.nswrail.net/trivia/formally_closed.php
http://www.nswrail.net/trivia/short_lived_sections.php
http://www.nswrail.net/lines/show.php?name=NSW:eastern_suburbs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Suburbs_railway_line,_Sydney
Also well worth a read:  http://home.iprimus.com.au/bexleyboy/arhs/unofficial.htm
Premier and party reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premiers_of_New_South_Wales

This could be a very long post, or a very short one if I get bored of the task. But if history matters at all, and it may not, it’s worth looking at who did what to stall or enhance the NSW railways over the medium to longer term. We could then draw meaningless conclusions about what the encumbents or pretenders may or may not do…

And I should say right now that we have to look at context, too. Railway line closures have been going on for a very long time, just as Sydney’s (and Newcastle’s) extensive tram network grew and declined over decades (but it was Heffron for Labor who finally pulled the pin on Sydney’s real light rail system). You can’t blame Labor alone – in fact the Liberal Premiers have a slight lead in the ‘rail closures’ game overall – however you can accuse both major parties of an over-eager opportunism. Flood damage can be a great excuse to close a line, for example. But glib analysis ignores the elephant in the room: the motor lobby, and it’s venal, self-interested cohorts. If anyone – or any thing – is to blame, it’s the motor vehicle. Truck and car competition, fostered and lobbied by car makers, pro-car organisations and the oil companies, has been intense over the last 60 years or so. Money that could – perhaps should – have gone into improved public transport was used instead to subsidise road building. First it was sealed roads, then bigger roads, straighter roads, wider roads. Our appetite for roads seemingly knows no bounds.

And people – voters – actively chose to buy cars, house them in little boxes on their increasingly remotely-sited land and use them, “proving” that continued investment in rail was not in the short term interests of citizens or their elected representatives. You can blame the old media, too, for their glorification of subsidised personal car transport and self-interest in selling car-related adspace. Blame who you like, but we are all complicit in this crime.

So here goes… and E&OE, I’ll do the best I can but you will have to check it out for yourself to be certain!
First of all – and my personal favourite in so many ways – is the Parramatta to Castle Hill line (it began as a steam tram, but later there were platforms and a direct connection with the main western railway). It actually continued onto Rogans Hill (from Castle Hill). It was closed in 1932 due to poor patronage. Jack Lang pulled the plug on this one, for Labor. Imagine if we’d have kept and developed that line. But people just didn’t use it, so you can understand why it was closed.

Some lines were closed formally by an Act of Parliament. At least they are clear-cut examples. They include:

• Ballina closed 1948 - McGirr Labor. Due to landslides.
• Westby closed 1952 – McGirr Labor.
• Richmond to Kurrajong closed 1952 – Cahill Labor. Unprofitable, flood damage (you can see plenty of remains beside the main road if you look for it).
• Morpeth closed 1953 – Cahill Labor. Due to siltation of the Hunter and Morpeth’s decline.
• Kunama (Batlow) closed 1957 – Cahill Labor.
• Taralga closed 1957 – Cahill Labor.
• Camden closed 1963 – Heffron (hey, they named a park after him) Labor. Coal trade moved elsewhere. Imagine if we’d kept this one, too? Again, leftovers are visible for the keen-eyed.
• Dorrigo closed 1993 – Fahey Liberal, suspended for a long time previously but still under a Liberal leader. Unprofitable, washaways.

Some lines are just “disused”, even though they may or may not have rail and sleepers, stations, platforms and bridges in place. You see these all around NSW – just look out your window as you drive around country NSW and look for raised embankments, fences, bridges and culverts where you don’t expect to see ‘em. According to this recent – and somewhat emotive – SMH article there are 58 such disused lines.

I’m not sure what is counted amongst that 58, but here’s what I can find:

• Inverell branch (to Moree) – progressively closed ’87 (Unsworth, Labor) to ’94 (Fahey, Liberal)
• Burcher branch – closed (maybe) between ’72 (Askin, Liberal) to ’75 (Lewis, Liberal)
• Corowa – closed ’75 (Lewis, Liberal)
• Kywong – closed ’75 (Lewis, Liberal)
• Rand branch – closed ’75 (Lewis, Liberal)
• Rankin Springs – closed ’75 (Lewis, Liberal)
• Tocumwal branch – closed ’75 (Lewis, Liberal)
• Tumbarumba – damaged by floods in 1974, not repaired (Askin, Liberal) and remainder closed in ’87 (Unsworth, Labour)
• Tumut – damaged by floods in 1984, not repaired (Wran, Labor) but already on its way out in ’75 (Lewis, Liberal)
• Unanderra-Moss Vale – stations closed ’75, ’76 (Askin, Lewis, Willis, all Liberal) but line open
• Yass Branch – closed ’58 (Cahill, Labor)
• Brewarrina – closed after flooding in ’74 (Askin, Liberal)
• Coolah – progressively closed from ’75 (Lewis, Liberal) to last train in ’82 (Wran, Labor)
• Molong-Dubbo – progressively closed, much of it in ’74 (Askin, Liberal) and finally and completely by ’87 (Unsworth, Labor). I looked at this one in 2009, pretty well taken apart now
• Oberon – closed 1980 (Wran, Labor) but station closures earlier (Askin, Liberal)

There are more but circumstances (like mine closures) make it obvious that they would close anyway. Indeed if you take the emotion and politics out of it, many lines just lose their reason for being – for example if a mill or a mine closes. Or if trucks take away the business. You can’t blame Liberal or Labor for that, unless you see their weakness in the face of oil-fueled transport lobby groups, populous fuel tax policy and the like as their fault. Which of course it is. Every time we give in to the oil lobby and lower or limit the tax on petrol or diesel at the pump we are killing off the rail system. 10 years of Federal Liberal government under John Howard can certainly take some of the blame here with singularly populous politicking on fuel pricing, but Labor can be just as weak-kneed when it comes to the crunch. Let alone the Greens, unashamedly politicking on the issue.

We could, after all, simply keep all the infrastructure and use and maintain it at huge ongoing cost, or mothball it at a lesser cost. The hidden cost is what we can’t do with that locked-up capital. Or we can sell it off, raise more cash and redirect it into other public services. That’s the game in play that the media, the Liberals and the Greens are playing silly games over.

And then there’s the Eastern Suburbs line. Started under engineer Bradfield in 1926, it was stopped by Depression and World War. Originally planned to extend from Town Hall to Bondi Junction before heading south through Randwick and the University of NSW, most of it just got dropped. It was restarted in ’47 and abandoned in ’52 (both decisions by Labor). Restarted again in ’67 (Askin, Liberal) and reviewed and shortened in ’76 (Wran, Labor). And “completed”, if that’s the word, by Wran in ’79. Now if we had kept the trams (stopped in 1961, under Heffron for Labor) then the route-shortening may have made some sense. Now it just looks like bad planning. That’s hindsight for you, though. It’s worth noting that a spur was proposed to Bondi in 1999 but it was heavily lobbied against by the residents of Bondi, presumably because the utility of the rail system for them was undermined by the increased ease by which more people could travel from faraway parts of Sydney to visit Bondi Beach. That’s People Power at work.

Much of the info above was found at a couple of sites, well worth exploring at the links below.
Railway status references:
http://www.nswrail.net/trivia/formally_closed.php
http://www.nswrail.net/trivia/short_lived_sections.php
http://www.nswrail.net/lines/show.php?name=NSW:eastern_suburbs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Suburbs_railway_line,_Sydney
Also well worth a read:  http://home.iprimus.com.au/bexleyboy/arhs/unofficial.htm
Premier and party reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premiers_of_New_South_Wales