Jan 2024 Channel update

Hi everyone! First of all, welcome to all the new members, quite a few people have come on board around the release of the V/line video, which is great to see!

I'm not sure if anyone noticed this, but over the past 3 weeks, I uploaded 3 videos, all going public exactly one week apart. This is a pretty big increase in production speed, with the average in 2023 being just 0.4 videos per week! I almost managed to get 4 for 4, with the next video 99.9999% complete today, however I spotted a last minute factual error which needs a voiceover correction, which I won't be able to do until mid next week. So, how have I been getting them out so much quicker than usual? Well as I'm sure you're all aware, over the last year this channel has been steadily gaining viewers, and while it's still small by international standards, it's now one of the biggest channels of this genre in Australia (depending on how tightly you define the genre). While income from the channel bounces around a lot at the whim of algorithm and other factors, it has started to be something I can increasingly rely on - helped a lot by your generous contributions through Patreon, which come in at a much more predictable and stable rate. I love working on these videos, and as the channel slowly grows, I've been able to spend more time on it as I become less reliant on other income sources. For 2024, I've managed to get myself some dedicated time each week to work on videos, which I didn't have before - and it's really satisfying being able to move through things a bit quicker, and really get stuck into it for longer periods. Ideally I would like to get to the stage where the channel has some kind of schedule, meaning viewers can expect to see new videos at more regular intervals. It's going to take a bit of experimenting to see how frequent I can make that, given some videos take a lot more time than others, but whatever happens, it will be a lot more frequent than last year!

Ok so, what am I working on at the moment? The screenshot above is from the next video (the one I almost completed today), the prequel to the Broadmeadows runaway - being the OTHER runaway from Broadmeadows in 1960. This has been an interesting one to work on, being the first time I've made a video discussing something that occurred entirely before my time. It's going to use a mixture of some historic photos from that era, as well as some of my own photos with work done to back-date them to the right approximate look. I've done the diagrams in a slightly different style to fit in better with the look of the photographs. This will be up before the end of next week.

The Upfield line video is coming along nicely, with most of the writing complete. Last week a mate and I walked the section from Batman to Gowrie, getting some photos and looking out for interesting details. As many of you will know the main interesting feature along there is where the line passes through the Fawkner cemetery, and there's even an internal level crossing on one of the cemetery's roads. This video is still going to take a while to put together due to it's sheer length - I don't think it will be quite as long as the Hurstbridge line one, but it will be pretty close.

Another one that's well progressed is a video on the Swanston St/St Kilda Rd tram corridor. It's well known that this is the busiest tram line in the world (in terms of tram frequency, I believe), and I'm going to take a look at how that's managed in terms of the way it runs, the track layout and diversions etc.

Thanks once again for you ongoing support, this Patreon community really is helping me to spend more time making videos, which I am extremely grateful for!

~Martin