Each different model of train has a different sound. Everything from the K-set backwards has stepped control with bleed resistors so they don't have any electronic sounds. The C-sets have a high pitched squeal that remains for the whole time the train isn't stationary. The T-sets have the same sound but only whilst the train is accelerating or slowing down under dynamic braking. The M-sets have the sound you described, which change volume and pitch as the driver lays on the notches. The H-sets sound like a cockatoo being strangled. The A-sets and B-sets sound like the T-sets but with a much lower volume. The single deck metro trains sound a bit like the M-sets.

Olympic Park station is somewhat under utilised in the post-Olympics era. It was designed to shift 40,000 people an hour but only gets anywhere near that capacity during State of Origin football matches. On normal daily services, only one platform is used but in sports mode, all four are used and people get off on one side of the train and then other people board on the other side. With travellers who are coming and going not co-mingling, the operation of the station is much more streamlined. If only they could do that at Town Hall!

If only they could do that at Town Hall!

Yeah, Town Hall is a total disaster. Narrow platforms, and way too many people.

Hands up those who remember the T-29 colour television chassis that was their first colour television chassis that was introduced in late 1974 just in time for C-Day on March 1st 1975.

Our first colour television was an PYE 22A3 which my family got in mid January of '75 and I'd watch all the colour broadcasts that aired for a couple of hours a day between October '74 until C-Day and then I stayed up until midnight on February 28th to watch Auntie Jack bring us from monochrome to colour on the stroke of 12 midnight.

As an apprentice in the mid 1980's I worked on countless numbers of T-29 and T-30's by cutting off the plugs on the deflection board and hard wiring them to the solder side of the board just to make them reliable to get them out the shop again as those plugs had a tendency to burn up the PCB when they lost tension which would cause them to get hot and burn up, sometimes burning up the board in the process which I had to patch up as well by filing away the carbonized board and repairing the damaged tracks to get them going again even though the CRT's were worn out which they used Toshiba CRT's, deflection and convergence yokes back then and the CRT was on the way out within 3 to 4 years with daily use.

C-day for me was in 1982 just before the Brisbane Commonwealth Games so that rules me out.

Well, I remember lots of valve colour TVs for sale at Waltons, at Rockdale Plaza.

The T29 was a reasonably reliable good performing CTV as I recall.
I was an apprentice in the 70's and repaired many of them.
The shop I worked in sold the Healing/HMV C211 at the time and they were hideously unreliable.
A baptism of fire for a young apprentice.
The T29 used well proven technology rather than ambitious SCR scan etc and was thus much more reliable.
A credit to the Australian designers.

Yes, re the T29, Pye were stuck with the Molex/Utilux connector system due to a big investment in automated tooling for them. The tooling was eventually modified to add a kink into the contact insert so as to apply greater pressure to the pins on the PCB. You didn't see much trouble after that was done.

Yes, the T29 (and the following T30. T34 and T30C) was a simple. reliable design that picked the best features from their advanced B&W designs as well as Japanese and European practice. This was dome because they took one look at the British PYE CTV and wisely consigned it to the dustbin of history! Having said that, some of the chroma circuitry was used with modifications in the T29 and the following derivatives.

Ever wonder why the bottom part of the chassis (power supply, hor op tx and tripler) was on a metal plate with tagstrips? It's because of the way Pye prototyped their designs. The T29 was really still a prototype when it was put into production! The later T34 shows what it was to become.

Pye had a successor design in the pipeline that was radically different. Never saw the light of day.

"Well, I remember lots of valve colour TVs for sale at Waltons, at Rockdale Plaza."

The only valve colour television chassis that was on sale in Australia was the Decca 33 (aka Decca 30 chassis in the UK) and that was introduced in the aftermath of the HMV C211, C212 chassis which had a lot of issues, they also introduced sets that were made by both General and JVC for the smaller 18 to 20 inch models.

AWA had plans of introducing an hybrid chassis made by Telefunken before they opted for the 2 chassis that Thorn in the UK had for them, that being the TCE 4000 (4KA) and TCE 3500 (3504) and even Philips had plans of making an Australian version of the K6 chassis which was an hybrid chassis from Europe with some changes to some of the valves and an all transistor audio o/p stage and they were going to call it the K6A chassis.

I had a K6 hybrid Philips at home watching pre official colour transmissions with hang-on chroma sub carrier dyi board.
Could well have been an Australian prototype Philips set.
Wish I had taken more notice then so I could report it more accurately some 50 years later.
JJ

Ah JJ! You had a set with a Chromalock box, did you?

For those who weren't around back then, this was a trick to allow you to watch colour before it was officially switched on. No colour burst was transmitted.

But the colour info was there in many videotapes that were coming out of the UK. all you needed to do was somehow lock the decoder circuit to the picture information.

No hybrid colour sets ever went into production here, thankfully.

Yes Ian. Home made chromalock. It worked OK and was similar in effect to a horizontal hold control, except you tuned the bars of colour until they got wider and wider, then finally locked for a while till it drifted off. Or locked out of phase.
Very impressive for visitors to the house.
However some of those same visitors were scared out of their witts when I brought home a HMV C211 and fired it up in great anticipation and it blew up with black smoke and an enormous bang.
Those that know this set will appreciate what I mean.
JJ

The C211s were not alone in this. Imported Blaupunkts were notorious for drama on switch on. A colleague of mine at the time used to call the first switch-on after a repair "flash-up"

I got zapped with one of those "Bluespots", and ended up in emergency.
On the bench, decided to pull chassis out a little more from the cabinet.
Mains on a little board on one side and horizontal output on little board on the other side.
No isolation transformer.
Smashed the set behind me when I fell backwards after what seemed like ages trying to let go.
And guess what, instigated isolation transformers on all benches, not just the CRO trolley, very shortly after.
Some say I have not been right since .
JJ

Yes, horrible things they were. That little board on the side was the kludge they fitted that allowed the set to start up with the rectifier in half-wave mode then switch over to full wave (to keep the electrical authorities happy) when the 155v rail appeared.

Expensive piece of junk!

I got well and truly zapped by a Blaupunkt in a customers home in a block of high rise housing commission flats.
It did seem odd that they had such an upmarket set in the day.
Same thing though, I reached over to the set to pull it towards me while I had the coax antenna lead in my other hand.
Pow! right across my chest.
Felt like I'd been kicked.
No one saw so I sat and recovered for a few minutes then continued on with the job.
It was my own fault as we had an iso tranny in the truck but it was big and heavy and I had to lug everything up to whatever floor it was on.

Also saw a colleague carted off to hospital after he got plated trying to pull the chassis out of a National B&W set with a metal case.
He inadvertently left it plugged in and once connected,couldn't let go.
He eventually threw himself backwards, the set went over his head and luckily yanked the mains plug out of the wall on the way.
He suffered quite bad gashes on his hands from the tin case.
The set looked like a twisted parallelagram on the floor but somehow the CRT didn't get broken.
I bit of panel beating later it got repaired.
It's hard to believe that we didn't have bench ELCB's at the time but they were sort of unknown back then (mid seventies).