The Gippsland train line

I am a ‘railway tragic’. I love the magic memories of the steam locomotives and I still love the long, clean lines of a train running through the countryside.

My heart quickens at the sound of a real steam whistle, or the rhythmic clacking of unwelded railway steel beneath the wheel. I love the imaginings of where the people might be from, or where they might be going. I love seeing freight being hauled to where it is wanted.

All that romantic thinking is one thing, but there is a clear-headedness in sometimes looking at the value of the lines and the trains they bear. The railways made our live better, sometimes even possible. In the main Gippsland line we have a huge amount to our history right in front of us, though we rarely seem to think about it.

This column has told the story of the fragmented construction of the main line, with work beginning at Oakleigh and Sale at the same time, with the Sale contractor having to bring his two works locomotives up by ship, unloading them at the Latrobe Wharf, just down from the Swing Bridge. That was an adventure in itself.

By June , 1877 the Sale to Morwell section was more or less complete and on October 1 that year the Oakleigh to Bunyip section was ready.

On December 1 the eastern portion was completed back as far as Moe, but what became known as “the gap” was not closed until March 1 the next year. Now trains could run from Oakleigh to Sale, but the Oakleigh end was not yet connected to the metropolitan tracks. That did not happen until 1879, after much political wrangling about the route.

On March 7, 1878 a special train with 300 VIPs aboard travelled from Oakleigh to Sale to a huge banquet where the line was officially opened. It left Oakleigh at 8.00am and steamed proudly into Sale at 1.00pm, only five hours later. It was a red-letter day for Gippsland.

The railway reached Bairnsdale in 1887 and went on to Orbost in 1916, though it never quite managed to cross the then-mighty Snowy River to reach the little town on the east bank. It was 370 kilometres from Melbourne and the trip took fifteen hours.

Now people not immediately served by the railways started lobbying for branch lines, and this was at a time when the Government was confident and fairly well off, so there was a fair bit of success.

Branch lines soon ran off the main line to communities in the hills, bringing life to industries such as the timber mills, the quarries, the paling-splitters, fishing fleets, dairymen, potatogrowing and, of course, coal mining. The railways moved heavy loads quickly, where the roads could not, especially in winter.

The best-known of these is now the narrowgauge line to Walhalla, opened in 1910, but there were others of much greater importance. The Mirboo branch line from Morwell was opened in 1885 and was immediately a success, with timber, dairy products and potatoes as freight, and a surprising number of passengers.

Two unusual and valuable products shipped out were black coal during the 1929-30 NSW coal strikes, and rabbit carcases by the thousands. The rabbits were a plague when running around but good tucker when they were no longer doing so.

A loop from Traralgon out to Maffra and Heyfield, then back to main route at Stratford was completed in 1886, and this had a small line out to Briagolong from Maffra, opened in 1889.

The Thorpdale ‘spud line’ from Moe was opened in 1888 as well as the timber traffic and ubiquitous potatoes, it carried black coal from the Narracan Valley mines.

A line was built northward from Warragul, reaching Rokeby in 1890, Neerim South in 1892, Nayook in 1917 and, finally, Noojee in 1919. It was a useful line for farm products and timber, and there was a ‘market train’ running to and from the Warragul market on Thursdays, but traffic slowly fell away as the roads improved and for some years the Noojee line and the Thorpdale line shared a single locomotive which shuttled back and forth between Warragul and Moe.

The development of the Yallourn power station brought bout a branch line from Moe to Yallourn, and the State Electricity Commission then built its own system between Yallourn and Morwell.

These branch lines fed their loads onto the main line to Melbourne. The longest and most important was the South Gippsland line, branching off at Dandenong and eventually reaching as far as Woodside.

It reached Port Albert in 1891 and the first official train steamed into Port Albert on 13 January 1892. That gave one example of the commercial effects of railways – the Tooradin fishing fleet moved to Port Albert, where the fishing was better and where iced fish could reach Melbourne in a few hours.

In 1921 the line was extended on to Yarram and then Won Wron, and in 1923 it came to Woodside, for no apparent reason.

The South Gippsland line then developed branch lines of its own. The black coal mines at Korumburra were served by spur lines to Coal Creek (1892), Jumbunna (1894) and then on to Outtrim (1896), and to Strzlecki Siding and thence to Black Diamond (1894). When the black coal there was beginning to cut out a line was built from Nyora down to the State Coal Mine at Wonthaggi in 1910.

The other branch line from the South Gippsland line ran from Koo Wee Rup to Strzlecki (1922) bringing whole milk and potatoes up to Melbourne and serving a couple of sand mining companies near Koo Wee Rup. It started closing down in stages in 1930 and was completely closed by 1959.

The great days of the railways in Gippsland, from the late 1870s into the 1950s are now gone only the main line still runs, other than a few tourist/enthusiast survivals. It would be easy to see the railways as no longer terribly relevant in Gippsland but that would be a mistake.

There are still long freight trains running into and out of Gippsland and there is a steadily growing passenger load being carried as people commute long distances, even to the Big Smoke, wanting to save the costs and stress of a long journey by road and to travel instead in relative comfort, with time to read, work or just relax as Gippsland’s green and pleasant scenery slides on by.

I still miss those great headlights coming out of the morning darkness, and the hiss and clank of the great locomotives, “live” machinery, the rhythm of the rails and the warmth in waiting rooms with fires lit for the comfort of passengers. I miss the sight of the smoke billowing across our farm and the long wail of the steam whistles.

The big N-class locomotives still exude a sense of power and are still a sign of people moving far and fast, but, and let’s face it, romance and imagination do not pay anymore.