Two of the world's great public transport systems, London's Tube and New York's Subway, use permanent line names or letters, such as in London, the Victoria Line, Circle Line etc, and New York, the A Line, E Line etc. It doesn't matter what extensions are made or new stations opened, the name stays the same.
Not so in stupid Melbourne where the line's name is the name of the suburban terminus. When a line is extended, the name of the line changes.
Thus the Dandenong Line became the Pakenham Line.
The St Albans Line became the Watergardens Line and now it is the Sunbury line. (I only just learnt of the latest change myself but I did know Watergardens was no longer used)
The Epping Line was extended and is now the South Morang line but will probably change again to the Mernda line.
The Broadmeadows Line became the Craigieburn Line.
This is a hopeless and needless situation. Some lines have scheduled trains not running the full length of the line, and are listed on the departure boards as say, Eltham, which is on the Hurstbridge Line. If you know to catch the Hurstbridge train to the closer Watsonia Station , you just may not know that the Eltham train will get you there too.
VLine (country) has its own problems too. The Geelong train line was extended a little on existing track and became listed as the Marshall train, now it is the Waurnn Ponds train, but not on the PTV website where it is listed as Geelong-Melbourne. Absolutely absurd. Technically it is the Warrnambool Line, as that is its ultimate destination. I would be quite happy with it being called the South West Line, and other lines receiving compass direction names, which gives you some idea of where they go.
With a little spare time when R was at his volunteer job, I thought I might take the train to Craigieburn. I am close to having travelled on all lines, so I have decided I will complete them all this year. It is so long since I have been on the Pakenham train all the way, I must do that again. I've haven't done the Frankston Line and it would be nice to continue on to the non suburban Stony Point on a different train from Frankston. That only leaves the Lilydale Line and the spur line to Cranbourne.
Craigieburn was interesting enough. I did not like the types hanging around Craigieburn Station though. They were very rough, loud and swearing. It certainly isn't the best part of Melbourne and after Glenroy, the housing standard deteriorated considerably, although some of the housing was quite new.
I was a little puzzled by the many train lines I had seen along the way. I studied some details and track maps once home and worked out what I wanted to know (thanks
Marcus). It is too nerdy and detailed to go into here.
I caught train I arrived at back to town. Nothing much to see at Cragieburn. I had a carriage to myself when we departed.
Much industry along the way.
A railway electric substation. I am not sure if it is still operational. I can't see wires coming from it, but they may be underground.
As far as I know, or remember, this is the only station with a closed entrance at the end of a platform........now I am doubtful. Elsternwick is, I think and there are probably more. There could be an entrance/exit behind me, but I don't think there was as otherwise, why did I take the photo. This is a problem of writing a few weeks after you have done something. You start to forget detail.