Removal of the old goods line, Avondale

Sometimes, through being oblivious to what's happening around you, due to thoughts of what needs to happen in your life that day, or even in the next few hours, you may miss history happening. Well, this nearly happened to me today -- but going over the old Crayford Street pedestrian crossing over the railway, I stopped. I heard trucks, a number of them, just to my left, but a short distance away. I stopped, looked, and saw a digger with a long fork attachment carefully carrying long pieces of something, and then carefully laying them in a pile.

Something inside my head "said": "Listen for the clang." They looked like bits of wood, I just assumed it was part of the process of starting the realignment of the station platform. But ... I heard the distant *clang*.

That did it. I fished for my camera, while taking in the whole view, and realised that, after 129 years, the last of the old goods lines was being ripped up.

The next few posts will have some of the photos I took today, plus a bit of an explanation. I was going to go up Crayford Street, but instead I dodged along Layard, listening for the clanging and the sound of saws cutting through the long-run metal, chopping up the old line. Headed up Rosebank Road, and caught probably the last we'll see of the old goods shed as well.

Up on the overhead bridge, I was taking shots, when someone who knows me around here stopped with her mobility scooter right beside me and asked, "You're doing historical stuff, aren't you?"

Yes, indeed I was.