Oaklands railway line, Victoria.html



The Oaklands railway line is a freight only railway line in north eastern Victoria, Australia. The line branches from the main North East railway at Benalla station until it connects with the New South Wales railway network at Oaklands, New South Wales.

History

The line opened in 1883 as a 32 kilometre branch line to St James in 1883, being extended another 32 kilometres to Yarrawonga on the south shore of the Murray River in 1886,¹ which formed the colonial and later state boundary between Victoria and New South Wales. Under the 1922 Border Railways Act the line was extended another 61 kilometres to Oaklands, New South Wales in 1938, where it formed a break-of-gauge with the existing New South Wales Railways branch line.¹ This break of gauge station included warehouse and other facilities of a military nature which are best located at breaks of gauge. The last regular passenger service on the line was between Benalla and Yarrawonga on October 13 1979, operated by DERM 55RM.²

With the opening of the North East standard gauge line in 1961,³ the line had standard gauge track at both ends, in addition to the broad gauge via Benalla. Gauge conversion of the line has proposed at various times, most recently by the Victorian State Government in 2001 with a proposed completion data of late 2003.⁴ The last broad gauge train to run on the line was a Pacific National grain service in May 2007.⁵

In 2008, agreement was reached to convert the North East railway line from broad gauge to standard gauge, which would leave the Oaklands branch as an isolated useless spur.⁶ Since the line carries wheat traffic (at least when there are no droughts) restoration of rail service needs to be tackled. There are several technical methods that might be adopted.

The local MP reports that the cost of converting this 126km branch to standard gauge is just over $13m.⁷ In October 2008 the Victorian State Government announced that an upgrade would take place.⁸

Variable gauge axles

An alternative to gauge conversion, so long as traffic remains light (say less than 300,000Tpa) is to use one or other of the naiscent variable gauge axle systems such as the SUW 2000 system from ZNTK.

Coal traffic

There is a potential for a new source of traffic on the line with the opening of coal mines in the area, with Coalworks having thermal coal reserves of 640 million tonnes at Oaklands.⁹

Stations

• Benalla railway station, Victoria - junction
• Goorambat - silo ¹⁰
• Devenish - silo
• St James - silo
• Tungamah - silo
• Telford - silo
• Yarrawonga - silo

(border) Murray River bridge replaced 1989 ¹¹

• Mulwala
• Sloane - silo
• Warragoon - silo
• Rennie - silo
• Sangar - silo
• Wangamong - silo
• Oaklands AWB and Grainco silos

See also

• Oaklands railway line, New South Wales

References

• NSWrail.net: List of stations and maps of the line