Gippsland railway line

This article is about the physical line itself. Not to be confused with the regional passenger rail service Gippsland V/Line rail service.

The Gippsland railway line (formerly known as the Orbost railway line) is a railway line serving the Latrobe Valley and Gippsland regions of Victoria, Australia. It runs east from the state capital Melbourne through Warragul, Moe, Morwell, Traralgon, Sale and terminating at Bairnsdale.

Gippsland line
Overview
Status	Operational from Flinders Street to Bairnsdale, closed beyond Bairnsdale
Owner	VicTrack
Locale	Victoria, Australia
Termini	Flinders Street Bairnsdale (previously Orbost)
Service
Services	Bairnsdale Cranbourne Pakenham Traralgon
Operator(s)	Passenger: Metro Trains, V/Line Freight: Multiple
History
Commenced	1877; 147 years ago
Completed	1916; 108 years ago
Technical
Number of tracks	Double track between Melbourne and Bunyip, and between Longwarry and Moe, single track between Bunyip and Longwarry and beyond Moe (passing loops at Hernes Oak, and at Morwell, Traralgon and Sale stations)
Track gauge	1,600 mm (5 ft 3 in)
Electrification	1500 V DC overhead between Flinders Street and East Pakenham
Route map Legend km City Loop via Southern Cross 0.00 Flinders Street 0.35 Princes Bridge City Loop via Parliament Hurstbridge line to Hurstbridge 2.40 Richmond Healesville line to Healesville CityLink Yarra River 4.20 South Yarra Sandringham line to Sandringham Metro Tunnel to Footscray 5.40 Hawksburn 6.70 Toorak 7.40 Armadale 8.90 Malvern 10.60 Caulfield Stony Point line to Stony Point 12.30 Carnegie 13.20 Murrumbeena Outer Circle line to Fairfield 14.20 Hughesdale Rosstown Railway to Elsternwick 15.40 Oakleigh 17.00 Huntingdale 19.20 Clayton 21.40 Westall 23.30 Springvale Spring Vale Cemetery line to Spring Vale Cemetery 24.40 Sandown Park 25.10 Noble Park Mile Creek 27.80 Yarraman EastLink Yarraman Creek 30.00 Dandenong Dandenong Creek South Gippsland line to Port Albert Eumemmering Creek 33.80 General Motors South Gippsland Freeway 36.20 Hallam Troups Creek 39.50 Narre Warren Princes Freeway 43.40 Berwick Cardinia Creek 45.80 Beaconsfield 50.20 Officer Gum Scrub Creek 54.60 Cardinia Road Toomuc Creek 56.90 Pakenham 58.80 East Pakenham Princes Freeway Pakenham East Depot 63.40 Nar Nar Goon 69.50 Tynong 72.66 Garfield 77.90 Bunyip 82.30 Longwarry 90.99 Drouin Princes Freeway 101.76 Warragul Noojee line to Noojee 104.20 Nilma 108.50 Darnum 114.20 Yarragon 122.30 Trafalgar Walhalla line to Walhalla 132.22 Moe Yallourn line (second) to Yallourn Thorpdale line to Thorpdale 140.00 Hernes Oak Yallourn line (first) to Yallourn Yallourn 900mm Railway to Hazelwood – to Yallourn Mirboo North line to Mirboo North 146.37 Morwell 148.30 Maryvale Princes Freeway 160.07 Traralgon Maffra line to Stratford 167.00 Loy Yang 173.80 Flynn 182.36 Rosedale 192.30 Kilmany 199.70 Fulham 208.02 Sale 218.00 Montgomery Maffra line to Traralgon Stratford Junction 224.10 Stratford 233.40 Munro 246.20 Fernbank 257.50 Lindenow 262.90 Hillside 276.84 Bairnsdale Bairnsdale Wharf spur 286.60 Nicholson 296.10 Bumberrah 303.90 Mossiface 306.30 Bruthen 321.40 Colquhoun 336.10 Nowa Nowa 345.80 Tostaree 358.80 Waygara 372.60 Orbost km This diagram: view talk edit

Prior to its dismantling in 1994, the line extended to Orbost. The dismantled section now comprises the East Gippsland Rail Trail, a shared bicycle, walking, and horseriding track.^[1]

Metro Trains Melbourne operates suburban passenger services along the inner section of the line as the Pakenham line, while V/Line services operate as the Traralgon and the Bairnsdale lines. Freight services also use the line, operated by Qube Holdings.

Rail lines were built to Gippsland in the 1870s and initially played a crucial role in developing agricultural industries in Gippsland as well as tourism. It also played a pivotal role in the development of coal mining in the Latrobe Valley in the 1920s. At its peak, the railway travelled as far east as Orbost, and there are still frequent services to many of the towns. Some of the disused rail lines have been turned into tourist railways and/or rail trails.

The Melbourne and Suburban Railway Company opened a line from Princes Bridge railway station to Punt Road (Richmond) and South Yarra and Prahran in 1859, and to Windsor in 1860, connecting with the St Kilda and Brighton Railway Company line. This line was extended to Dandenong, Pakenham, Warragul, Moe, Morwell, Traralgon, Sale, Stratford and Bairnsdale between 1877 and 1879. It was extended to Orbost in 1916.

The railway to Orbost and operated until 1987, principally carrying timber and farming produce. In the early days of the railway's operation, dedicated passenger trains ran, but they had ceased by the 1930s. The track infrastructure was dismantled in 1994. The line traversed a mixture of farmland, hills and heavily forested country, and included numerous bridges, including the Stoney Creek trestle bridge, the largest of its kind in Victoria.

In 1954, the line from Dandenong to Traralgon was electrified, mainly because of the expected briquette traffic from the brown coal mines in the Latrobe Valley. Over the next two years most of the line between Dandenong and Pakenham was duplicated and provided with power signalling, although the Narre Warren to Berwick section was not done until 1962. Over time, the rail transport of briquettes petered out as industry converted to natural gas and homes were converted to other forms of heating.

Electrification was cut back to Warragul in 1987, with suburban-style trains providing the services from there to Melbourne. Electrification was further cut back to Bunyip in 1998, before ceasing entirely beyond Pakenham in 2001. The line east of Sale was closed in 1994, but was reopened to Bairnsdale in 2004. In 2005, the Regional Fast Rail project upgraded one of the two lines between Pakenham and Traralgon. This project also included removing the remaining electrification infrastructure from Pakenham East Depot to Traralgon, with the exception of a heritage-listed length in Bunyip.

The Noojee railway line was built north from Warragul in stages from the 1890s, reaching Noojee in 1919. It was closed in stages from 1954 to 1958.^[2]

In 1910, the 762 mm (2 ft 6 in) Walhalla railway line was completed through mountainous country from Moe to Erica and Walhalla. The Platina to Walhalla section closed in 1944, Erica to Platina in 1952, and Moe to Erica in 1954.^[3] The northernmost section, between Thomson and Walhalla stations, has been reopened as a tourist railway by the Walhalla Goldfields Railway, and provides regularly scheduled trains.

The Thorpdale railway line was also opened from Moe to Thorpdale in 1888, it was closed in 1958.

The Yallourn branch was opened from Hernes Oak (between Moe and Morwell) to Yallourn in 1922 to serve the adjacent power station development. It was replaced by a line from Moe to Yallourn in 1953 because its route was required for brown coal mining,^[4] but the new line closed in 1987, having been disused since the late 1970s.^[4][5]

The Mirboo North branch line was opened in stages from Morwell to Mirboo North between 1885 and 1886; however, it was closed in 1974.^[6] The route of the line was partly dug up as part of the Hazelwood open cut mine. The Maryvale paper siding also connects to the main line at Morwell and remains open today for regular freight traffic.

The loop line via Maffra was opened from Traralgon to Heyfield, Maffra and Stratford in 1887, which was closed in stages between 1987 and 1993. A branch line was opened from Maffra to Briagolong in 1889 and closed in 1952.

There used to be several timber tramways running to a number of the stations between Pakenham and Yarragon.

The expansion of the railway in the late 1870s helped to develop Gippsland. It enabled milk from western Gippsland to be sold fresh into Melbourne while the dairy industry of East Gippsland provided cheese and butter. It also enabled development of west Gippsland's market gardening and orcharding industry for sale in Melbourne markets.

It also encouraged the development of a tourism industry notably at Lakes Entrance. It did, however, end coastal shipping traffic and the use of Sale and Bairnsdale as ports.

In the 1920s, the Gippsland railway played an important role in developing the mining of lignite coal and the development of the Latrobe Valley for power generation primarily serving Melbourne and Victoria. This saw the development of industry in towns such as Yallourn, Morwell, Traralgon, Moe, Warragul and Drouin.

The development of the Gippsland Railway helped fuel the Melbourne land boom in the 1870s. The original departure point for the railway was Oakleigh with the line connecting Oakleigh and Melbourne not built until 1879. The Victorian Railways bought land in Oakleigh for use as workshops. Oakleigh became a centre of what was known as "railway fever" as developers developed and marketed houses close to rail lines between Oakleigh and other suburbs for use of workers travelling to and from their job. At the height of the land boom in 1888, land sales were being held two or three times a week in the district. The collapse of the land boom in 1889 eventually contributed to banking collapses in 1893, and the major depression of the 1890s.

The Gippsland railway remains a significant passenger corridor on the V/Line network, although its use for freight business has now declined to only one major customer, being Australian Paper's export traffic from its mill in Maryvale.

Many of the lines in Gippsland have closed because they had become uneconomic. Some of these have been turned into tourist railways, and other bits into rail trails. The only tourist railway left operating is the Walhalla Goldfields Railway between Moe and Walhalla. Until 2016, the South Gippsland Railway operated services between Leongatha and Nyora, via Korumburra, however, services ceased in 2015 and the line is now being converted to a rail trail.

Other stretches of line have become rail trails for use by bicyclists. These include:

• the Noojee Trestle Bridge Trail in the upper reaches of the Latrobe River;
• a section between Erica and the Thomson River on the former Walhalla line (pending eventual reconstruction of the Walhalla Goldfields Railway's tourist line between Thomson and Erica stations).;
• Collins Siding to Tyers Valley Rail Trail near Moe;
• Moe to Yallourn Rail Trail;
• Mirboo North to Boolarra Rail Trail;
• Great Southern Rail Trail from Leongatha to Foster; with extensions under construction to a planned length from Nyora to Yarram.
• Bass Coast Rail Trail Anderson to Wonthaggi;
• East Gippsland Rail Trail from Bairnsdale to Nowa Nowa and Orbost; and the
• Gippsland Plains Rail Trail from Stratford to Maffra.

• Fiddian, M. (1997). Trains, Tracks, Travellers. ^{[full citation needed]}

• South Gippsland Railway
• Statistics and detailed schematic map at the vicsig enthusiast website

History

• City of Monash page on the Gippsland Railway
• Gippsland Rail Trails Archived 24 July 2008 at the Wayback Machine
• Monash University gazeteer on Oakleigh Archived 25 August 2006 at the Wayback Machine
• Monash University gazeteer on Moe