Victoria Harbour Heritage Trail
STOP 8
The Railways
Location: The junction of Victoria Harbour Promenade and Harbour Esplanade
In 1859 the government-owned Victorian Railways’ Spencer Street Station, originally known as Batman’s Hill Station (renamed Southern Cross Station in 2005), was opened. The single platform ran parallel to Spencer Street, with a dock platform at the north end to allow passenger movement on one side, and goods handling on the other. Soon there was a plethora of lines as shown on the map above. Victorian Railways built lines into regional Victoria: the line to Ballarat (via Geelong) and the Bendigo line both opened in 1862, linking Melbourne to the main gold mining centres. The railway came to Echuca via Bendigo in 1864, connecting Melbourne with the riverboat trade along the Murray.
The benefit of linking maritime and land in a vital transport system was obvious. Given terrain on both sides of the river was flat, access and exit gradients were generally low in height. This meant that bridge construction costs across the Birrarung/Yarra were comparatively low too. Paradoxically, such low, inexpensive bridges were built at a time when vessels carrying goods in and out of the port city were becoming larger and larger. Maritime trade, the economic life-blood of Victoria became increasingly unable to access existing river port infrastructure either side of the Birrarung/Yarra. This resulted in the extraordinary public investment in excavating the new and vast Port Victoria abutting the Spencer Street Station so that goods and people could be conveyed to the expanding suburbs and regional Victoria with minimal delay, linking Docklands to regional Victoria and to the other states.
Rail freight transportation was a critical port component of Victoria Dock until 1977 when the introduction of containerisation forced a move to more modern, less-congested rail facilities and to the more efficient door-to-door road transport. This rail hub, known as the Melbourne Yard ran from Flinders Street, skirting Victoria Port to Moonee Ponds Creek, just beyond the Bolte Bridge.
When it was built, the Melbourne Yard was the longest building in Australia (385 metres, with 26 arched doors on the east side and 28 on the west side). By the 1890s, Melbourne Yard was the busiest goods shed in continuous use, employing up to a staggering 1500 men in Docklands. It remained the major transit depot for goods in Victoria until the 1960s.
With the Docklands and stadium developments in the 1990s most of the sidings and goods sheds were removed, leaving the impressive brickwork of Number 2 Goods Shed as evidence of a former glorious age of rail supremacy in Docklands. Despite its listing on the Victorian Heritage Register and a National Trust classification, in the early 2000s No 2 Goods Shed was cut in half by the extension of Collins St into Docklands. To allow for this extension, nine bays in the middle of the goods shed were demolished, and since then this goods shed exists in two parts, known as Goods Shed North and Goods Shed South. Despite the loss of its middle section, the Number 2 Goods Shed is still the largest and most architecturally elaborate nineteenth century railway building in Victoria.
FURTHER READING
IMAGE CREDITS
Image 1: Remnant rail tracks on North Wharf Road, photographer Jeff Malley 2024
Image 2: Victoria Harbour, early 1960s, Public Record Office Victoria
