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The White Hat Guide to Yardmaster

This article was first published in the White Hat Melbourne Newsletter No.501 of 19th August 2011 as
Melbourne's Hidden Gems No.563
The newsletter usually contains one or two of Melbourne's Hidden Gems and you can subscribe here.

A number of Melbourne’s Hidden Gems go unnoticed by the general public even though they are right under their nose. Take the black industrial signal box in the rail yards at Southern Cross Station. It is passed by thousands of trains a day. Thousands of people walk past it on their way to and from Docklands Stadium. Thousands drive past it every day along Wurundjeri Way. Yet we suspect that few look with the eyes of a Bruce Postle at this everyday piece of the industrial landscape.

Signal boxes are not the sort of buildings that go out to international design competitions. They are functional places where functional people do functional things. They don’t need break-out rooms with space for butchers’ paper on the wall where staff can come to an inclusive and fully consultative consensus about what track the next train should take.

Next time you go under the Dynon Road underpass, look up at the cream brick building above. There’s a good functional signal box. No nonsense and it combined two functions in the one building. There was everyday signalling, then there was administering the hump. The hump was a means of assembling goods wagons for various freight trains. The wagons were pushed over a hill (or hump) and the points to the various branches would be changed so that the wagon formed up in a nice orderly fashion according to their destination. Fragile goods were not suitable for this method of percussive assembly so occasionally a railway worker would chalk the words ‘No Humping’ on the side of a wagon – a message which seems not to have been fully embraced by the youth of the inner west.

The practical signal and hump control box no longer operates but I believe our heritage authorities have decreed that it should be preserved as a beacon of the functional cream brick architecture of that period and a warning to future generations.

Meanwhile in the Spencer Street rail yards another smaller brick signal box (or yardmaster’s building to be more precise) was due for replacement. Major construction was only possible during the four hour window in the middle of the night when train’s weren’t running. The architects chose functional pre-cast concrete of a type which would match the environmental sustainability standards pioneered by the neighbouring Docklands precinct. None of that sounds promising. A brick box replaced by a black concrete box.

But have a closer look. Being functional doesn’t mean you can’t have fun. The windows are all irregular shapes which breaks up the surface from the outside and gives quite a magical effect from the inside. Then around these windows are various whimsical metallic decorations. It is almost as though a four year old has found a black shoe box and set to work with her box of stickers. Certainly not the sort of thing you expect to find in the middle of a busy rail yard.

So why do tens of thousands of people pass this building every day without really noticing it. It is partly because the effects can be subtle. Like a number of recent Melbourne buildings it has been designed to change its appearance with the changing light and the changing weather, and reflecting the changing weather makes it quintessentially Melbourne.

Next time you are passing we suggest you take a closer look. Then the time after that we suggest you look again – you will probably find it appears subtly different.