One of the basic rules of railway engineering is that the tighter the radius of a curve, the slower a train has to travel through it to avoid derailing. I’ve written about the history of the Ballarat line a lot recently, including the construction of a deviation to cut the length of the journey between […]
Almost 20 years ago something interesting happened on the Ballarat line – a brand new stretch of railway line was built through open paddocks, cutting the travel time between Melbourne and Ballarat. This is the story of the Bungaree Deviation, which opened to trains in 2005. Some history I’ve written about the history of the […]
Another instalment in my photos from ten years ago series – this time it is March 2008. Like most months we start down at Geelong, where I found a stretch of decaying timber sleepered track on the main line to Melbourne. Despite the millions of dollars spent on the Regional Fast Rail project between 2004 […]
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.
