Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Victorian country train radio chatter

With all the government radio going to digital trunk radio I was surprised to find that communication between driver and guard, and sometimes station and driver, is via standard FM radio. Today I caught a train from Kyneton to Southern Cross station and recorded what I heard.

Mostly it's the guard saying when passengers have finished getting on and off but at about 48 seconds you'll hear Sunbury station ask us to wait due to a train broken down ahead.


To record this I made a 30dB pad with DC isolation so I could listen in headphones and also feed audio into the powered mic input on a voice recorder.

Amusingly I heard the driver refer to a city train as "the sparks". I guess they are electric while the country trains are diesel electric.


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