Re: Truganini Road, Carnegie

[Paul Blair <pblair@pcug.org.au>]

I grew up in Bent Street, about 3 blocks north of The Cutting. This
was the (then) unfilled cut between Bambra Road and Booran Road.

We were strictly forbidden to go near The Cutting, so of course, we
knew it quite well. It was sort of fenced, but to 9 year olds, fences
were only a momentary obstacle.

Caulfield Council (as it was) used it as a dump for assorted unwanted
stuff - old paving material, prunings, and lots of unknown liquids
(no, the night cart service had long since gone). Eventually, they got
quite serious about filling it, and the first part was built on as an
old folks home.

Council wanted to sell all the land, but local outcry (and the
likelihood that the fill would subside gradually over the years,
leaving structures damaged) stopped that.

By the mid-1960s, the deck of the original grade sep between the
Frankston line and the mill line was in poor shape. I was working for
the old VR as a structural engineer, and got the job of redesigning
the superstructure. The second "opening" was also paved for road
traffic, to reduce the quite considerable number of crashes that
occurred there.

Paul Blair
Canberra

On Fri, 08 Sep 2000 14:04:36 GMT, "Daniel Bowen"
<dbowen@custard.REMOVE.net.au> wrote:

>
>"Napier" <napier@vicnet.net.au> wrote in message
>%PKt5.11135$cr3.317002@ozemail.com.au">news:%PKt5.11135$cr3.317002@ozemail.com.au...
>> <excerpt>
>> >I don't believe so - there's no mention of it in the book I read about
>the
>> >history of Caulfield - which has an excellent account of the Rosstown
>> >railway debacle.
>>
>> >If anybody wants full details of the book with all the Rosstown goss in
>it,
>> >let me know.
>>
>> Daniel, thanks for this information.  Yeah, I would be interested in the
>> details of that book; please post back.  When was the actual line removed?
>
>"From sand, swamp and heath - A history of Caulfield"
>Peter R Murray and John C Wells. City of Caulfield, 1980.
>
>Probably a bit scarce, but I'll bet you can find a copy at the Glen Eira
>library. I got mine when they were selling them for a couple of bucks each.
>I live in Caulfield, and find local history kinda interesting... The main
>description of the Rosstown Junction Railway starts on p140.
>
>Not sure when the lines were removed, but the book says the Rosstown Railway
>Acts were repealed in 1916, and the rails sold to a company in Tas. Around
>the same time, Caulfield Council was buying the land, which is why a lot of
>it is now park land.
>
>> Is the remaining bridge (I read that in this newsgroup somewhere) the one
>> that is used by the Frankston line over Oakleigh Road?  If so, did the two
>> lines not actually cross but went under/over each other?
>
>Yes, p144 mentions the Commissioner for Railways wanted the intersection not
>to be a level one - given the shoddy condition (both literally and
>financially) of the Rosstown Railway, I could see why he might not want to
>have anything to do with it! -- although the diagram on p137 suggests there
>was a turn out from Rosstown railway west to Frankston line south.
>
>[...]
>
>> <further issue>
>> On another note, was there ever a siding (is that the correct term?) that
>> ran off the Frankston Line between Neerim Road and the Caulfield junction?
>> To be exact, just south of Lord Street running east... the termination of
>> Lloyds Avenue and St Vincent Street suggest there was.  Could there have
>> once been a triangle-type formation in the line to enable Dandenong trains
>> to turn south onto the Frankston line directly without going into
>Caulfield?
>
>I haven't seen any mention of it in the above mentioned book,

-------------------------------
Paul Blair
pblair@pcug.org.au