Victorian Railways Research Articles

Victorian Railways Commissioners v Coultas: The Untold Story

Abstract [The story of liability for ‘nervous shock’ begins with the Privy Council decision in Victorian Railways Commissioners v Coultas in 1888 holding that such damage was too remote—a decision soon rejected by courts in England and elsewhere (though it had considerable influence in the United States). Over the next hundred years, courts gradually extended the boundaries of liability for what is now called psychiatric injury or mental harm. But the law reports tell us nothing about James and Mary Coultas, apart from what happened to them on one particular day. Moreover, the assertion in the initial report that Mary suffered a miscarriage is actually misleading, colouring judicial attitudes to nervous shock over a long period. Who were James and Mary Coultas, and why did they bring the action? What were the consequences of losing the case, and what happened to them after that? This article looks beyond the law reports to other sources in order to answer these questions.]

Selling Mount Buffalo National Park: Victorian Railways, Harold Clapp and the Blueprint for National Park Promotion in Australia

ABSTRACT This article explains how a modern advertising campaign for Mount Buffalo in the 1920s influenced subsequent nature tourism campaigns made by Victorian Railways and the Australian National Travel Association, which was established in 1929 and collapsed in 2001. The Buffalo campaign and those that followed are significant for their lasting impact on the social construction of Australian nature, narratives of Indigenous dispossession, settler possession and a consumer dimension that rests at the core of the Australian national park idea.

Revolutionary Ireland and Transnational Labour Solidarity on the Victorian Railways: The Case of Alex Morrison and Tom Wilson, 1921–22

In 1921, the Victorian railways became a site of contested loyalties surrounding the response of the Australian labour movement to the Irish revolution. This paper will examine the case of Alex Morrison and Tom Wilson, two non-Irish shop stewards of the Victorian Branch of the Australian Railways Union (ARU) victimised by the Lawson Government in March 1921 for publicly sympathising with Irish railway workers killed by the “Black and Tans” in Cork during the Anglo-Irish War. The controversy, which coincided with the birth of the Self-Determination for Ireland League, became a focus for both an Empire loyalist backlash and a labour movement defence campaign in the lead up to the 1921 State Election. It marked a moment at which the Irish crisis of 1916-23 catalysed organised campaign activity in the industrial wing, in addition to the political wing, of the Australian labour movement. Framed within the paradigm of international labour solidarity instead of Irish diaspora, the stance of Morrison and Wilson reflected the mutual entanglement of Irish-Australian and labour internationalist allegiances in the wake of both the Australian conscription plebiscites and the Russian Revolution. A “view from below” of the “Irish Question” in the Victorian railways presents an alternative, if parallel, form of transnational politicisation around Ireland to that of “long-distance nationalism.”

Checks and Balances: The Semiotics of Ticketing on Victorian Railways, During the 1930s and 1940s

As well as transforming the way terrestrial space was traversed, railways spearheaded texts that enabled passenger traversal of such spaces to be regulated and monitored. Among the most important of these texts was the railway ticket, which as a pre-electronic information storage device, was capable of encoding through semiotic inscription, details of a passenger’s spatial entitlements, both on and off a train. Yet curiously these facets of the ticket have not hitherto been the subjects of analysis. Through analysing the railway ticketing system of Australia’s Victorian Railways during the 1930s and 1940s and the manuals that regulated the choreography of ticket inspection and the associated performances of passengers, this article redresses this oversight. Using Foucaultian and semiotic concepts, it argues that the railways tickets of the past, like their contemporary counterparts, provide convenient and portable mechanisms for gate-keeping and calibrating mobile populations.

“Even Our 2nd Class Cars are More Comfortable Than Motor Buses!”: An Analysis of Victorian Railway Posters Between the Wars

ABSTRACTRailway posters from the 1920s and 1930s are now regarded as one of the high points of twentieth-century graphic art. While their iconographies have been the subject of considerable scholarly analysis, the contexts in which they operated and functioned have received much less attention. This paper, which focuses on posters produced by Victorian Railways for a range of purposes not necessarily travel related, redresses this. It is argued that railways posters, which operated in conjunction with other forms of railway propaganda, provided a convenient and attractive way for the state to operate on its population, at a distance. Hence, they were used as rhetorical devices to exhort Victorians to travel by rail, to eat more fruit and thereby assist the state’s primary producers. As competition from motorisation became more intense during the Depression, resulting in pronounced and unsustainable rail deficits, the need to diversify the sources of railway revenue, as the analysed posters reveal, became more exigent.

Motion pictures: an analysis of the posters of Victorian Railways during the 1920s and 1930s

One element of the unrelenting enthusiasm for railway history is the poster. It is evident in the large body of literature, both academic and lay, on the subject. The majority of the literature though, deals with the posters of North America and Europe. Their Australian counterparts have not received the attention they deserve, something this paper attempts to redress. It undertakes an extensive examination of the many railway posters produced by Victorian Railways (VR), between the wars, under its visionary Head Commissioner, Harold Clapp. Utilising a geo-semiotic approach, it is argued that the railway posters of this period provide insights into the development of Victoria's tourist geography – an inventory of places and regions imbued with recreational and leisure assets. In so doing, trains, tourists, destinations and beaches were illustrated and ‘verbalised’ as never before, using state-of-the-art techniques, derived from the new field of commercial art.

Gilbert and Sullivan for Lawyers

Usual practice, in present-day performances of the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan, is to freshen songs through substitution of current references for original references. The aim of a freshening is to perform a song for the benefit of contemporary audiences. Example 1 (from The Mikado): “Then the idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone,/All centuries but this, and every country but his own,” can be understood readily. Example 2 (also from The Mikado): There is no present humor in the reference to “Parliamentary trains,” a Victorian railways term. This essay offers a freshening of “I Am the Very Model of a Modern General,” from The Pirates of Penzance. Revised legal references, such as to court-packing (Legal Tender Cases; President Roosevelt), should be, but aren’t, teachable moments. One of the songs in The Mikado is “As Some Day It May Happen That a Victim Must be Found.” In the song, Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner, offers his list of Victorian “society offenders...who never would be missed.” Among the revised legal references in the freshening is, “And law profs who convey as truth the lies of Marbury.” Other legal references aren’t better.

Nominal wage rigidity prior to compulsory arbitration: evidence from the Victorian Railways, 1902–1921

Studies across a wide range of countries have shown that relatively few workers have received year-to-year wage cuts since the Second World War. However, there is very little micro-level evidence from earlier years, when lower inflation rates and a less regulated labour market may have led to stronger downwards pressure on wages. This paper examines wage adjustment at the Victorian Railways, Australia, between 1902 and 1921. It is shown that, despite strong downwards pressure on wages, nominal wages were rigid downwards and a high proportion of triennial wage changes were exactly zero. Even for workers with very long tenure and in years when the national price level declined, wage cuts were rare. We also show that the characteristics of workers whose wages were unchanged were very similar to those receiving wage cuts. Finally, we show that unlike the wages of incumbent staff, entry wages for new junior staff frequently declined from year to year.

INTERNAL LABOUR MARKETS: EVIDENCE FROM TWO LARGE AUSTRALIAN EMPLOYERS

This paper examines internal labour markets in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century using personnel records from the Union Bank of Australia and the Victorian Railways. Both employers hired young workers and offered them the possibility of very‐long‐term employment. Salaries were determined by impersonal rules, such as being attached to tenure and to position. Workers rarely received nominal pay cuts. This approach to human resources was designed to retain and motivate workers. We show that all of the classic features of internal labour markets used to describe American firms in the 1970s were present dating back to the Victorian period.

The true history of the design of the Melbourne, Mount Alexander and Murray River Railway

The railway to Bendigo, built 1856 to 1862, is constructed to high standards. Large embankments and viaducts carry the line over valleys as it climbs to cross the Great Dividing Range. I K Brunel held the appointment as Inspecting Offi cer in Britain for the Victorian Railways at the start of the railways construction and it has become widely accepted that he was responsible for its design. The examination of original documents shows this not to be the case. The responsibility for the railways high standard lies with Captain Andrew Clarke, R. E., then Surveyor-General of Victoria.

Book Reviews : In the Service: a History of Victorian Railways Workers and Their Union

Book Reviews : In the Service: a History of Victorian Railways Workers and Their Union

Leslie Harold Martin, 21 December 1900 - 1 February 1983

Leslie Harold Martin was born on 21 December 1900 at Footscray, Melbourne, in the State of Victoria, Australia, the son of Henry Richard and Ettie Emily Martin ( née Tutty). His father came from Somerset and was superintendent of transport for the Victorian Railways, but died prematurely as the result of an accident. His mother was born midway between the cities of Sydney and Melbourne on a bullock train that her father operated for many years between the two cities [1]*. As a child he received his primary education in Melbourne at the Flemington State School from which he gained a scholarship to Essendon High School. He was only 11 years old when his father died and, as money was always scarce, he had to work as a grocer’s errand boy to help support him self at home and at school. He studied hard and managed to win a Junior State Scholarship that took him to the premier Melbourne High School for his final three years of secondary schooling. Here his natural gifts and interest in mathematics and science were soon recognized and encouraged by his mathematics teacher, Miss Julia Flynn, and this led to his winning a Victorian Education Department Senior Government Scholarship on the basis of his excellent performance in the school leaving examinations in December 1918. This scholarship enabled him to enter the University of Melbourne at the beginning of 1919. He was admitted to the course ‘B.Sc. for Education’ to train to become a teacher.

Michael Hechter's Theory of Regional Underdevelopment: A Test Using Victorian Railways

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Government Contracts and Colonial Manufacture: The Example of the Victorian Railways in the 1870s

Government Contracts and Colonial Manufacture: The Example of the Victorian Railways in the 1870s

Transitions between the limbs of compounded circular curves

Summary The material of this paper is based upon an investigation into the problem made by the Author when engaged on relocation and improvement surveys in the Western Australian Government Railways and, more recently, in an investigation into aspects of realignment of existing compound curves made at the request of one of the Offices of the Victorian Railways.

RELATION OF EMOTIONS TO INJURY AND DISEASE: A CALL FOR FORENSIC PSYCHOSOMATIC MEDICINE

Excerpt I. INTRODUCTION AND HISTORICAL REVIEW Few problems of scientific proof have been so perplexing to court and counsel, and to the expert witness, as those which arise in the "nervous shock" c...

JOHN F. GOULDING PTY. LTD v. THE VICTORIAN RAILWAYS COMMISSIONERS

JOHN F. GOULDING PTY. LTD v. THE VICTORIAN RAILWAYS COMMISSIONERS

LAYCOCK v. VICTORIAN RAILWAYS COMMISSIONERS

LAYCOCK v. VICTORIAN RAILWAYS COMMISSIONERS

RITCHIE v. THE VICTORIAN RAILWAYS COMMISSIONER

RITCHIE v. THE VICTORIAN RAILWAYS COMMISSIONER

SLADE v. VICTORIAN RAILWAYS COMMISSIONERS

SLADE v. VICTORIAN RAILWAYS COMMISSIONERS