Re: Victorian Closed Stations near Melbourne.

[David Langley <del@ancc.com.au>]

Geoff Lambert wrote:

> 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.

I have no evidence that it was interlocked. Please elaborate.

> 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.

It may well have never been a goods station. Maybe a forerunner to the RMSPs.

>
>
> 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.

My copy of the signal box diagram dated 5 July 1943 (for the reopening of Deer
Park as an interlocked crossing station) shows a siding extending from the up
end of No 2 road towards the north - and it is named Leathercloth Siding.
Another source I questioned this week suggested that Ardeer Siding was for a
short time known as Leather Products Siding (or similar name). Research will
now concentrate on clearing up this tangle.

Your earlier note regarding the separate returns will cause us to lean towards
the Deer Park siding. Interesting that the diagram of 1943 shows it.

David Langley.