Current Freight
A History of Freight on the
line
SATURDAY 9th
& Sunday 10th SEP, 2000 FREIGHT on the Broadmeadows line
Current
Freight
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...