That's because no matter how beneficial railways might be, conservative governments always see them like this.

I love not being able to see out the window of my tram during dark and rainy weather. Why do we allow advertising to take up so much space?

The Milwaukee Road operated the "Olympian Hiawatha" in competition with Great Northern's "Empire Builder". It was hauled by electric locomotives across the Rockies and Cascades.

So that's two connections between the cities.

Sunrise is almost as pretty as sunset.

I will never be a morning person, but there is definitely something to be said for watching the sky get slowly lighter from the window of a train as it travels through the countryside. The darkness turns to silhouettes, and the fields are pale with frost, a foggy haze settled over the landscape.

Apparently Monty isn't the only hungry bridge in Melbourne. Even better is that the Racecourse Rd bridge has a tram pass under it, so it would have been a ZAP as well as BANG.

Perhaps motorists should learn to read low clearance signs?

We could even go further than that, and have different melodies to precede different types of announcements. This passage from a book about travelling around Switzerland by train is such a brilliant idea:

Ten-coupled locomotives were pretty popular across Europe, the USSR, and China, and to a lesser extent, North America. I don't think there were any ten-coupled locomotives in Australia though.

Then there's the Bulgarians, who built these gigantic tank locomotives.

If you see this, post a vehicle

Saw This Will Destroy You perform tonight in Melbourne, supported by Yomi Ship and Mowgli. TWDY played their eponymous album in full plus a few other songs, finishing the set with Little Smoke. Incredible gig—I'll be playing these bands on repeat for the next week.

Me when someone mentions railways on Bluesky.

This is why they don't question road spending:

God Is An Astronaut performed an absolutely amazing gig in Melbourne tonight, supported by Treebeard and Solkyri.

There are five tiers of rail services:
- Intercity railways (light grey)
- Regional lines owned and operated by the national railways
- Suburban lines operated by the national railways
- Interurban lines independently owned and operated
- Subways operated by the municipalities

One of my worldbuilding projects at the moment is an urban rail map of the largest metropolitan area in the main country that I'm focusing on. It's still a work-in-progress as I add more routes.