Waking up in Geelong

In the 2016/17 Victoria Budget, the State Government has allocated $518 million for upgrade works on the Ballarat line, making the railway system more reliable and marking room for more train services. Track duplication and building additional crossing loops is simple, but some components of the upgrade are a little esoteric.

The easy bits

The government media release details the intended works.

• 17 kilometres of duplication between Deer Park West and Melton,
• 3 kilometres of duplication west of Warrenheip,
• new crossing loops at Bacchus Marsh, Ballan and near Bungaree,
• removing five level crossings,
• new stabling facilities at Melton and Rowsley,
• second platform at Bacchus Marsh and Ballan stations.

Duplication between Deer Park West and Melton is simple – in wide open countryside building a second track along the existing one is simple.

Rockbank already has two platforms, so the new track just has to tie in at either end.

At Ballan station, there is plenty of room for a crossing loop and second platform.

History note 1: As late as 1982 Ballan had a mainline track and crossing loop, two freight sidings, a goods shed, and stock yard for loading sheep and cattle onto trains. Today it just has a single platform, and a single track with no passing capability.

Bacchus Marsh station is a little more constrained, with stabling sidings located opposite the existing single platform.

But their existence needn’t block progress – presumably the new stabling facilities at Rowsley, west of Bacchus Marsh, will allow the existing sidings to be decommissioned and a second platform built in their place.

Confused at Warrenheip

We now get get into more confusing territory when we look at the three kilometres of duplication at Warrenheip, east of Ballarat. Two tracks already run between Ballarat and Warrenheip, and you can see trains run on them with your very own eyes.

The problem is that these two tracks operate as two completely separate railway lines – the northern track being used by V/Line trains heading to and from Melbourne.

While the southern track is only used by trains headed between Ballarat and Geelong – which almost exclusively freight services.

The reason for this complexity is tied up in history.

The first railway to Ballarat

Ballarat’s first railway was completed in 1862 as double track, but was indirect and travelled via Geelong. Today’s direct route to Melbourne came much later, being built from both ends over a 10 year period as a single track branch line serving towns along the way, until 1889 when the two met in the middle to form a through route that now linked Melbourne to Adelaide.

With the new direct line opened, the route via Geelong dropped in importance, so in 1934 it was cut back to single track as an economy measure. The exception was the section from Warrenheip to Ballarat – as the junction of the two routes, the double track was retained to allow for the heavy traffic headed up the hill, with trains using the left hand track in each direction.

This arrangement required signalling staff to attend Warrenheip station on a full time basis to direct trains – a cost considered too high by 1995, when the junction at Warrenheip was decommissioned, and the double track reconfigured as the current pair of two parallel and independent single tracks.

So what is the three kilometres of duplication at Warrenheip? In reality it is the reinstatement of the operational flexibility removed back in 1995, but without the staffing cost thanks to the use of modern remote controlled signalling.

How do you remove FIVE level crossings?

Given the millions of dollars being spent to remove just one level crossing in metropolitan Melbourne, how can you remove five crossings as part of a $518 million project?

The government media release doesn’t really help.

The new loop near Bungaree will also improve safety for motorists and the local community by removing five level crossings on the existing Bungaree Loop.

It takes an understanding of what exactly the ‘Bungaree Loop’ is for the promise to make sense – there are actually are two parallel sets of railway tracks passing through the area!

So why does one set of tracks run direct between the townships of Millsbrook and Dunnstown, and the other takes an extended detour via Bungaree and Wallace? The answer yet again lies in the history books.

Taking the goat track to Ballarat

The railway through Bungaree was never intended as a main line – it opened in 1879 as a branch line that ran from the main Geelong-Ballarat at Warrenheip, to the small township of Gordon. Given it was a railway to nowhere, taking the straightest route across the countryside wasn’t top priority – cost was.

As a result, when the surveyors reached the steep Moorabool River valley, they didn’t build a bridge – they sent the railway north for for the flatter terrain of Bungaree and Wallace, then back south to avoid the foothills of Black Hill outside Gordon.

As previously mentioned, this branch line from Ballarat was progressively extended east to serve towns along the way, as did a branch line headed west from Melbourne, eventually meeting in the middle in 1889 and forming the main line from Melbourne to Adelaide.

In the years that followed the number of trains using the railway between Melbourne and Ballarat grew, as did the size of each – but nothing was done about the dogleg via Bungaree.

PROV image VPRS 12800/P1, item H 2545

This changed in 2000 when the newly elected Bracks Government announced Regional Fast Rail – a project to speed up trains between Melbourne and the regional centres of Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo and Traralgon.

For the Ballarat line a target travel time of 64 minutes was set, which meant that the existing steam-era alignment needed to be rebuilt to allow the new maximum top speed of 160 km/h to be reached.

At Bungaree the solution to speeding up trains was simple – a brand new 8.2 kilometre section of railway joined the two halves of the existing doglegged route, bypassing the numerous tight curves along the way.

Some impressive civil works were required to build the new line, which had no level crossings:

• 380,000m3 of cut and fill earthworks,
• Construction of four road over rail bridges:
  • Sullivans Road (16m span)
  • Spread Eagle Road (12.5m span)
  • Peerewerrh Road (12.5m span)
  • Old Melbourne Road (18.5m span)
• Two rail over water bridges:
  • Moorabool Bridge: 270m long, 27m high
  • Lal Lal Bridge: 363m long, 40m high

The new deviation joined the existing route at Millsbrook and Dunnstown, but it was decided to retain the old route as a crossing loop, allowing trains in opposite directions to pass each other without stopping.

But in the years that followed, keeping the old route for the purpose became a false economy – track maintenance expenses are a function of track length, so a far more cost effective option would have been to build a crossing loop on the new track, and abandon the ‘long way around’.

My theory for the inaction – the ‘target travel time’ based criteria driving the Regional Fast Rail project meant that minimising capital expenditure and ignoring future operational costs was the order of the day.

Which now leaves us back at the current $518 million Ballarat line upgrade project – the ‘long’ route (marked in red) and the five associated level crossings is being dismantled, and a brand new crossing loop is being built on the ‘short’ route (marked in green) to retain the ability for trains to pass each other.

If only the Regional Fast Rail project had done the job properly a decade ago!

Footnote 1 – wasted money on level crossing upgrades

Retaining the old route via Bungaree looks even more stupid when I remembered that the five level crossings along the way once lacked boom barriers.

VicTrack funded a upgrade of the four level crossings along the Bungaree Loop during the 2012/13 financial year.

• Lesters Road, Bungaree (Flashing Lights, Boom Barriers)
• Bungaree-Wallace Road, Wallace (Flashing Lights, Boom Barriers)
• Old Melbourne Road, Millbrook (Flashing Lights, Boom Barriers)
• Wescotts Road, Wallace (Flashing Lights, Boom Barriers)

Less than five years after that upgrade, and all four crossings are about to close for good!

Footnote 2 – wasted money on new stations

Last week I wrote about the the forgotten access road to Caroline Springs station – if that wasn’t enough wasted money, now an additional $4.9 million needs to be spent reworking the yet to be opened station in order to provide a second platform on the soon to be duplicated track.

Once again, a lack of planning is burning up yet more taxpayer money.

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