I seem to have developed a fascination with Melbourne's lost railways.

This is rather less romantic than it sounds. Only a small part - the inner-circle city - of Melbourne's suburban rail network is underground, which makes the whole business of "lost railways" rather less Neverwhere and more something Google maps have been extremely helpful with. (Speaking of which, I experienced my first surround-vision streetview on Google maps yesterday. It's possible Google wants to turn the whole world into a first-person shooter. It's possible this will be awesome.)

Let's start at the beginning. Early last week, I ventured out into the slightly-further-out suburbs (this is a big thing for me; I'm very attached to the city) to try and find an Italian and possibly magical cobbler to make me a new pair of boots. This mission successfully discharged, I was skipping happily back down Nicholson Street when I realised I'd just crossed traintracks crossing the road. This perplexed me mightly, as to my right there was a building. The only patch of actual tracks was those that crossed the road; but in either direction, something of a cleared space of park ran.

I started my investigation playing with the Melways, and even there it's quite easy to trace where the railway used to run, from one eastern curve to the corresponding western curve, across the inner-northern suburbs. When I went to the online maps, it was even more obvious in the "satellite" option, a band of parkway and cycling track.

I attributed my early satisfaction with this discovery to the answering of a couple of old, if vague, questions. One, why the signs on the lines out to Clifton Hill say "Clifton Hill Loop", and another, why the western line going north first swings rather wildly out into a curve. Mysteries solved! Excellent work.

Where I went wrong, perhaps, was getting on wikipedia to try and find out some more about the history of the line, and perhaps why it was abandoned (because I think it'd be dead handy these days, but I suppose that's the sort of foresight that's easy to possess some sixty years after the fact). This was a problem, because I found that the article on this railway was part of an "abandoned railways of Melbourne" group. Now I'm fascinated by this "Outer Circle Line" that appears to have once run through the eastern suburbs. And let's not even get started on how interested I've always been in the fact that the St Kilda and Port Melbourne trainlines were converted into tramways.

The most hilarious part of all this is that I live - and have for the past five years lived - across the road from the Railfan Shop. I've been peering at the maps in the window, of Melbourne's past-and-present train network, and correlating places and dates to things I've been looking at. It's possibly only a matter of time before I actually go in, at which point I may spontaneously generate a mackintosh and turn into an old man. Stay tuned!