Gus

@ThatGarthGuy @Maggie_Perry6 There was a referendum in 1967 to remove the nexus between the sizes of the House of Representatives and the Senate, and it was unsuccessful. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_Aust…

@Maggie_Perry6 Honestly I think Australia should disconnect the Senate size from the House size They should be expanding the House to at least 200 seats, if not more, and a Senate where each state has about 12 Senators per state per election would push more people into Above the Line voting)

Hearing word that Labor is planning to expand the house from 150 seats to 174 - But this still leaves every MP having to represent ~160k people each. We already have seats like Durack which stretch from Outer Perth to the Kimberley, and this won't do much to change that... 1/🧵

@literar63 It's interesting that the Caulfield tunnel will still only have trains going anticlockwise around the City Loop even though HCMT trains won't be using it.

And a bright find your platform poster, showing Big Switch arrangements. The City connections map follows the September 2026 map with the Vline overlap at North Melbourne

Updated find your way map at Melbourne Central. Similar to the Flinders Street one with line colours through the platforms and showing the connection to State Library.

The regular announcements on trains still said "This is an all stops service" even though the train was skipping a stop, and the displays between the doors still said "All stops to [destination]", but there were special announcements about how trains were skipping Barangaroo.

The line diagrams on trains still showed Barangaroo. But between arriving at the station before Barangaroo and arriving at the station after it, the station icon for Barangaroo was replaced with a different icon with an exclamation mark.

On New Year's Eve 2024, Sydney Metro services didn't stop at Barangaroo between 17:00 and 23:45 due to large crowds. During this period, there were some changes to passenger information displays, since trains were skipping a station they'd normally stop at.

While extending the Parramatta Light Rail line from Carlingford to Epping would probably be possible, it would be difficult due to the steep topography in Carlingford and the width of Carlingford Road. And an underground rail line would be faster than a light rail line.

However, branching also complicates services, and limits the frequency of each type of service. While diverting South Line services into a new tunnel would require changing trains on many trips, it would increase the overall capacity of the network.

In the past, I thought the idea of building a rail tunnel from Merrylands to Epping via Parramatta and Carlingford (an idea implied in the Future Transport Strategy 2056 document) wasn't a very good one. However, over the first half of this year, I changed my mind on this.

New Exploring Sydney's Railways video! In this one I visit Como Station on the Illawarra Line, which has a beautiful station entrance. youtube.com/watch?v=eSpuvq…

I'm back in Sydney now, after getting the train back from Canberra. The train might not be the fastest way to get between Sydney and Canberra, but it's a nice way to do it.

City Hill, at one of the corners of Canberra's Parliamentary Triangle.

The Butters Bridge, a pedestrian bridge over the Molonglo River which opened in 2016.

The under-construction Molonglo River Bridge.

The Kingston Foreshore area, close to Canberra Station.

I'm in Canberra now, after taking the train from Sydney. This was my first time on an Xplorer train.

On the weekend, due to trackwork, trains on the Metro North West & Bankstown Line were running between Castle Hill and Sydenham. This is the view from the front of a train using the crossover east of Castle Hill to terminate there. This crossover isn't used by normal services.