Current Freight
A History of Freight on the lineSATURDAY 9th & Sunday 10th SEP, 2000 FREIGHT on the Broadmeadows line
Grain Trains
[pic] Quarry Trains
A History of Freight on the line
Today, the Broadmeadows line is a busy Suburban line, but in the early days, when the line terminated at Essendon, freight services were provided to most of these current stations, as they were semi-rural farming locations, rather than suburbs like today.
The Flemington Racecourse line served several livestock sidings at Newmarket, and also the Darrel Lea factory, which was situated on the current site of the Newmarket Shopping centre. All these sidings are long gone, along with the associated cattle trains.
With lines extending north to service centres such as at Albury, Shepparton, Tocumwal, Seymour, Cobram, Echuca, the Broadmeadows line played host to many Freight trains in earlier times. As the line became more and more busy, a Freight line linking Broadmeadows and Albion was constructed, to bypass the line, and to provide access to the Western rail yards, and later a standard gauge rail link to Sydney.
As Melbourne yard is now only a memory, any freight running to the city goes to Tottenham. With the lines configured as they are , this means that trains have to reverse to run via the BMS line, so it is far to difficult to do so.
The only freight seen running on the line today is a regular grain service from Tottenham to Kensington, via North Melbourne, and occasionally the Pioneer quarry train from Kilmore East runs through to the south eastern Location of Westall.
I hope to add more about freight in the future...