Wombat Creek Tramways

With the heritage steam tram out on a ‘special’ the intersection at the Bank gets quite busy.

After years of standing obsolete the signal box has commenced operating. Two red/green signals have been erected. Their purpose is to guard against collisions between trams on the Bride Road line and trams coming from the Explosives Factory.

The signals are linked to the chosen direction of the Explosives line. If a tram runs towards the Factory, the signal next to the signal box will be ‘red’ and the signal in Bridge Road will be ‘green’. A tram leaving the Factory will reverse the signals.

The signal in Bridge Road only applies to trams. A sign will be put up, telling ordinary road users to ignore the signal.

Six years ago I published an image of Oscar Leaky’s Plumbing with a caption of a sign coming soon. Well, the sign writer took a long time to finish the job. In the meantime the business has been taken over by Oscar’s son Max (The truth is, I forgot I had named the owner Oscar).

Six intoxicated punters are on their way home after a day at the races. Looks like the man to the right didn’t have a lucky day and may be out of money for the tram fare. The two guys at the back seem to have had better luck.

Undisturbed by the drunken punters the crowd at the Mug Punter Hotel enjoy the Seekers playing.

Changed the light globe from ‘warm white’ to ‘daylight. Quite a different!

All shops on Bridge Road have been finished and rented out.

From left to right:

Holden dealership with the latest model EH. Sparky Electrical. Curl Up & Dye hairdresser. Spotless Dry Cleaning. The Outfitter. Bradman’s Foodland. Pasta la Vista Italian Restaurant.

The car maker ‘Holden’ has opened a new dealership in Wombat Creek. They a selling their latest model EH. According to my neighbour, who is a car enthusiast (and model railway modeller), puts the time into late 1963. The shop front still needs an awning. Also, the exhibited cars appears to be out of scale compared to the family in the shop. At a later stage I will try to generate a more suitable background. The building to the right of ‘Holden’ is the last building to fill out the space along the backboard.

With the ‘Royal Arcade’ relocated Bridge Road now consists of three buildings. The Toole’s Buildings houses the Italian restaurant ‘Pasta la Vista’ and ‘Bradman’s Foodland’. The inspiration for ‘Bradman’s Foodland’ come from a photo of the namesake in 1960’s Footscray.

The overall photo shows how far back of the layout the buildings are. Very hard to reach, unfortunately. The black cord to the left is a temporary connection between two sections of track. It will eventually be replaced by soldering a cord to the track at towards the left. Not sure how to reach! The buildings will be set into a footpath/pavement, which will stretch all the way out of the photo to the right. This can be finished before a wye set of points is replaced by a right hand set of points resulting in a smooth curve behind the bank. Again, an area very hard to reach.