Re: Victorian Closed Stations near Melbourne.

[G.Lambert@unsw.edu.au (Geoff Lambert)]

David Langley <del@ancc.com.au> wrote:

>Geoff Lambert wrote:

>Bacchus Marsh RC closed - that's a good question, research will follow.

It opened with the line.  There were 3 loops, signalled and
interlocked.  Opened only on race days.  I have always been intrigued
by references in descriptions of the Great Libel Case (Tait versus
Syme (The Age)) about the racecourse station built in about 1889 as a
political sop to someone and which only ever saw one train and was
then closed again.  Never been able to determine whether this was the
Bacchus Marsh Racecourse station

>Never heard of Leather Products Siding but there may have been an industry
>situated on the Ardeer Siding somewhere that sent this type of product by
>rail?

Well, it was separate in the returns from both Ardeer and Federal
Manure Sdg.  It had about 3,000 tons annual traffic for several years
and this was far from the lowest on the line.

>Other closed sidings on the west are:
>Dog Trap Gully Sdg cl 10 Dec 1897 (58.7km)

Working Timetables of the 1890s showed that a shunt trip ran daily to
this siding.  There is some ambiguos evidence that it existed in two
places, but the confirmed location was where the big embankment, that
gave way in a flood in 1891, was.  It was a lopp and dead-end, a
Parish Plan shows it extended well into the clay pit (the siding was
for clay).

>Long Siding cl 1891? (65.8km)

Like Dog Trap, there is some evidence that this existed in two places.
There was also a siding called the "41 mile siding", which may have
been the same thing.

>Other locations are:
>Hilton (25.7km) little known about - open 28 Sep 1888, cl about 1897.

Gee, I thought I knew all the sidings and places on this line.  Never
HEARD of this one.  The distance would place it near the later RMSP
there.  The fence line here wobbled about a bit, rather suggestive of
sidng/station.  This is one of the few locations in Australia covered
by Microsoft's Soviet satellite photo imagery on the Web, perhaps you
could spot it there..... can see other remnants in these photos.

I raised a question here a couple of years ago about a possible
(quarry?) siding, on the down end and the north side of Deer Park, a
kind of mirror image of Ravenhall.  On my travels in the 1960s/70s, I
could often spot what looked like the remains of a formation heading
in a north westerly direction towards the middle of a paddock, where
there appeared to be a quarry.  One possibility was "Sandringham
Quarry Trust Siding", but I think this was actually Ravenhall in a
previous life.  Needless to say, the above-mentioned satellite imagery
doesn't show it, because of modern development there.

Geoff Lambert