Keperra to Ferny Grove Rail Upgrade

[Golliwog]

The tavern construction got underway today with the tree's cleared from the site. Might be interesting to see how the construction sites operate together as they're 2 seperate companies. Anyway, angle parking opened along Conavalla St yesterday, as did most of the parking on the old tavern site. From the looks of it, you can now once again drive through the parking lot between Samford Rd and Conavalla St. Noted construction workers were standing in the parking lot providing advice to people trying to find a park this morning.

[ozbob]

Looking forward to having ' luncheon ' at the new Tavern, and checking out the completed station as well ... lol

[SteelPan]

Yeah, I 2nd that, use to enjoy every "3rd blue moon or so" going out to FG for a few cooling ales and a pub feed - merging a train trip, even suburban, with beer and food is always a slice of an early Heaven!

Is the new tavern roughly where the old one was?  (forgive my ignorance, but sine work started out there I've avoided, saving my "inspection" for when all is complete  )

[p858snake]

Yeah, I 2nd that, use to enjoy every "3rd blue moon or so" going out to FG for a few cooling ales and a pub feed - merging a train trip, even suburban, with beer and food is always a slice of an early Heaven!

Is the new tavern roughly where the old one was?  (forgive my ignorance, but sine work started out there I've avoided, saving my "inspection" for when all is complete  )

Not unless we are doing a combined station house and tavern (not that i'm that opposed to that...)

[Golliwog]

The new tavern is going to be on the corner of Samford Rd and Arbor St, opposite the BP.

[BrizCommuter]

Still no idea of when the new timetable is expected. TransLink cannot even be bothered responding to requests! 

http://brizcommuter.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/phase-2-train-timetables-still-missing.html

[SteelPan]

The new tavern is going to be on the corner of Samford Rd and Arbor St, opposite the BP.

thanks

[SteelPan]

Yeah, I 2nd that, use to enjoy every "3rd blue moon or so" going out to FG for a few cooling ales and a pub feed - merging a train trip, even suburban, with beer and food is always a slice of an early Heaven!

Is the new tavern roughly where the old one was?  (forgive my ignorance, but sine work started out there I've avoided, saving my "inspection" for when all is complete  )

Not unless we are doing a combined station house and tavern (not that i'm that opposed to that...)

[Golliwog]

Still no idea of when the new timetable is expected. TransLink cannot even be bothered responding to requests! 

http://brizcommuter.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/phase-2-train-timetables-still-missing.html

QR emailed about a FG line CRG coming up to discuss train scheduling on the FG line. I would think this may be used to get input on what sort of service we want/letting us know what's possible on the line.

[Golliwog]

They've changed the access to the station again while they pour the slab under the big cover. They do now have 4 readers though. Station building looks fairly well completed though.

They have now opened the full car park on the old tavern site, and have now closed off the temporary angle parks they had opened along Conavalla St to increase the capacity while they finish them.

No work has yet begun on the new set of lights that is meant to be on Samford Rd when this is finished. The tavern is going well, the underground carparking level has been excavated and they're now pouring the footings/foundations.

As expected, I don't think the finished capacity is going to meet demand. As is, both sides of Samford Rd are being (illegally) parked out from the station to here. This had never happened previously.

[Golliwog]

Been a while since I gave an update. As I understand it, the new ticket office is open. They've opened up the plaza/concourse area with 2 ticket machines either side of the big concrete blade column. There's something like 3 sets of bike racks for ~6 bikes each near the car park, and the locker area looks nearly ready to go. New PIDS and station name boxes have been installed along the platform, as well as above the ramp up to the platform. Coming off the platform, they display the next 6 buses (though they don't seem to have a spot to show which of the 2 bus stops they leave from). The second bus stop isn't open yet, though the works look fairly complete, though I think they will have to install the new traffic lights and intersection on Samford Rd first before they can start running buses into it unless they're going to try and turn around in the car park.

Go Gates have been installed and appear to be nearly operational. Currently, they're fenced off and everyone goes around to the side, but they have been turned on and appear to be connected.

All in all, it's coming along quite nicely. The only downside is the article I saw in the local paper the other day gave a completion date for the station and car park works as late this year (IIRC) but the new tavern won't be open until the middle of next year. No drinks while waiting for a train for a while yet.

For those that went to the big combined CRG and remember them showing the 3 walls with stencils on them, the leafy one is one of the retaining walls between FG and Keperra, which recently had the planter boxes they mentioned installed above it, though it has also recently had the wall tagged by the local graffiti 'artists'.

[techblitz]

yeah was there last week and its improved a lot since a few months ago.Looks like the bowls club will enjoy good patronage for a fair while longer till that tavern comes to fruition

[Golliwog]

The Arbor St level crossing was closed today, while they installed a 3rd set of level crossing lights on each side. They now have one on each side of the road as well as on the traffic island recently installed in the middle of the road (partly for these lights it seems, but also to prevent right turns from the car park onto Arbor St).

[Golliwog]

Notice up on the QR Project website. The final car park switch is set for this weekend. The Samford Rd entrance will become and entrance and an exit again (currently, entry only except for construction vehicles), at the same time the closed off part adjacent to this that extends down to the old tavern site will be opened. The car parks currently on the old tavern site will be closed again while they resurface it (this is apparently for ~6 weeks).

It is not clear if the 397, 398 and 399 will begin to use the new second bus stop on the Samford Rd side, but I expect not as nothing yet has been done for the second Samford Rd exit, so they would have to turn around through the car park.

[Golliwog]

Final car park section has now been opened, it was full on Friday. It's roped off again now for tomorrows markets though. All that remains to be done is for the bus traffic lights to be switched on and routes 397, 398 and 399 to start using the new interchange, leaving the 367 alone at the existing new interchange. Site office has gone, all the remains are some barricades stopping people from using the right turn (bus only) lane at the turned off bus lights with a skip and some other stuff still in that area.

No notices about when the bus switch is to be made, or any timetable changes (change bus arrival/departure times by a minute or two saved by not going all the way around).

The new Ferny Grove tavern is also going well, as I understand it, it's still on target for a early/mid year completion date.

[ozbob]

Heading out to Ferny Grove on Wednesday.  Plan to have lunch at the tavern.

Most will be working, and uni I expect but if you can make it all welcome.

11.19am FG arrives at 11.48am at FG.

[ozbob]

Nice lunch at the new FG tavern. 

Well, all complete now.  All car parking full.  Trains getting good loads as well. 

Just left FG EMU 82.  Life is so much better with 15 minutes TUAG ...   

[ozbob]

Around Ferny Grove station



























Photographs R Dow 21st August 2013

[BrizCommuter]

Just don't use the station toilets when a train is approaching FG!

[Golliwog]

Around Ferny Grove station



Photographs R Dow 21st August 2013

All I could think of as soon as I saw it...

[techblitz]

Northwest News 30.10.13

[Golliwog]

Northwest News 30.10.13

Excellent. Hopefully they include more than just the car park area in their plans.

[Gazza]

and trains enter through a airlock.

Dunno air conditioning the whole station internally would be wise...It'd be a huge volume to condition in the first place, and a train idling for 15 mins waiting to return to Brisbane is going to just going to be dumping heat into the space from its own rooftop AC systems.

Why not just make the station sit outside the airlock?

Better yet, no reason why a shopping center couldn't be open air, like Harbour Town or Newmarket?

Atriums can be open air too..Eg the John Oxley Center http://goo.gl/maps/LxLOr

Or the state library http://atdw.tq.com.au/multimedia/TQ/9000196_8.jpg

[aldonius]

Toowong and the Valley would be our local examples of what you aircon and what you don't.

Minimising the interface between the AC area and the station section. You might want a reasonably complicated array of fans to organise the platform-level airflow, though, especially to vent all the hot air somewhere that isn't up the stairwell.

[longboi]

Is there demand for a 5-6 story shopping centre? You would effectively be building a new Westfield in the middle of suburbia.

Seems like a nutty idea to me.

[SurfRail]

One of my very long term foamy ideas is to see the line sunk between Oxford Park and Enoggera to eliminate the level crossings and the bend at Gaythorne, and redevelop the area around Mitchelton so the station infrastructure is below ground and had a Toowong-style precinct around it.

Brookside is in the wrong spot but you can get some decent activity happening on the station site/Blackwood precinct.

[HappyTrainGuy]

and trains enter through a airlock.

Dunno air conditioning the whole station internally would be wise...It'd be a huge volume to condition in the first place, and a train idling for 15 mins waiting to return to Brisbane is going to just going to be dumping heat into the space from its own rooftop AC systems.

EMU's love pumping out the heat. Next time you're on a platform/onboard the train and depending on the direction of the light try to spot the heat haze shadow on the platform surface 

I'd imagine there would also be concerns over freights stopping/traveling through. Would be interesting to see the results of a steam train going through

[Golliwog]

Freight trains through Ferny Grove?

And Surfrail, Brookside would actually be a great location if the FG line had been built as originally planned. From memory, the QR historian told us they wanted to basically follow the Kedron Brook (which runs directly behind Brookside) from Alderley out, except the Fed's paid extra because they wanted a railway siding for the Army Barracks. Either way, BCC has a Neighbourhood Plan for Mitchelton which involves developing that area around the station to some extent. Haven't seen any progress on that front though.

[HappyTrainGuy]

Hahahahaha. Catching up on too many threads at once. For some reason I thought it was Toowong 

[Golliwog]

Hahahahaha. Catching up on too many threads at once. For some reason I thought it was Toowong 

Haha, thought it was something like that. You'd need some serious rail extensions before you had to worry about that sort of stuff at Ferny Grove....