Down on Spencer Street

For Melbourne Open House 2010 CitiPower opened ‘JA’ zone substation – a key part of the power supply to the Melbourne CBD.

For historical reasons the substation was divided into two – the State Electricity Commission of Victoria who generated electricity controlled the 66kV input.

While the Melbourne City Council Electrical Supply Department (MCCESD) controlled the 11kV output to consumers.

The operations of the substation were merged following the breakup of the SECV – generation, transmission, distribution and retail being the current segments of the electricity industry.

Outside the substation was a big hole – the site of the former Spencer Street Power Station.

Ready for the ‘Upper West Side’ development, which had already erected an elevated display suite.

The heritage listed cast iron water tank being the only remnant of the old power station.

The $550 million development was completed in 2016, containing 2,207 apartments across four towers.

Trains around Melbourne

Metro Trains Melbourne was busy promising more staff on the network, with ‘despatch paddles’ rolled out at City Loop stations during morning and afternoon peak to indicate that the doors were clear.

But the experiment was short lived – abandoned by 2012.

On 27 July a faulty overhead wire cut power between Southern Cross and Flinders Street stations, severely limiting the amount of trains that could move through that section, and causing crowds across the network.

As ‘compensation’ passengers were given a free travel day on Friday 30 July.

Since then, only the 2016 V/Line VLocity train issues have result in free travel as compensation to passengers.

A happier note was early works for Regional Rail Link, with construction of Southern Cross Station platforms 15 and 16 moving along slowly.

2020 marks five years since V/Line trains from Geelong started using the completed corridor.

And out at the Yarra Valley Railway was an even happier day, with local MP Ben Hardman and Minister for Tourism and Major Events Tim Holding attending the launch of regular heritage train services on the line.

Since then the railway has gone from strength to strength, with government grants allowing the line to be progressively restored from Healesville to Yarra Glen.

V/Line services extended to Maryborough

July 2010 also saw the ribbon being cut on the extension of V/Line rail services from Ballarat to Maryborough. The project was announced in December 2008 as part of the Victorian Transport Plan, at a cost of $50 million.

Public Transport Minister Martin Pakula, Premier John Brumby, and Member for Ballarat East Geoff Howard rode the first train.

Creswick was the only station to be reopened in this first stage, with a new platform constructed opposite the heritage listed buildings.

Clunes following in December 2011.

And Talbot in December 2013.

As part of the project flashing lights and boom barriers were installed at level crossings.

And level crossings on minor roads were closed.

The increasing size of trucks presenting difficulties at other level crossings.

But one unwanted ‘upgrade’ was the removal of passing loops at Sulky, Tourello and Talbot – leaving a 60 kilometre long section of single track between Ballarat and Maryborough, and crippling the ability to run freight services along the corridor.

The recent Murray Basin Rail Project attempted to rectify this at a cost of $440 million, but has left the corridor in even worse condition.

Rail freight

On the standard gauge mainline between Melbourne and Adelaide, a new passing loop was being built outside Lara.

Giving a slight reduction in travel times and increase in efficiency for freight trains on the corridor.

However plenty of freight trains were still being hauled by 60 year old antique locomotives.

Such as those moving grain from the wheat belt.

To the Port of Geelong

The intent of the Murray Basin Rail Project was to convert Victoria’s orphan broad gauge network to standard gauge, allowing the use of locomotives from anywhere in Australia, but with the project stalled, today broad gauge freight services still rely on similarly aged rolling stock.

Finally, I headed out to Waurn Ponds, where loaded cement hoppers were sitting in the sidings ready for despatch.

Alongside B-double cement trucks.

In the end the trucks almost won, with the final cement train ran from Waurn Ponds in December 2015 – but in a surprising move, Qube Logistics returned cement traffic to Victorian tracks in September 2019.

And road freight

‘High Productivity Freight Vehicles’ became widespread at the Port of Melbourne in 2010.

These ‘super’ B-double trucks took the place of port rail shuttles, a project forever proposed but yet to be implemented.

These new bigger trucks serve container parks in the western suburbs of Melbourne, with projects such as the $48.5 million Kororoit Creek Road duplication project in Altona North making road transport more convenient.

Work on the project was completed in December 2011, including the removal of a level crossing on the Werribee line.

Another gift to road freight was the $200 million Anthony’s Cutting upgrade on the Western Freeway between Melton and Bacchus Marsh.

Requiring a massive cutting west of Bacchus Marsh, and new bridges across Djerriwarrh Creek.

The upgraded freeway opened in June 2011, making it even easier for trucks to replace trains on the Melbourne-Adelaide corridor.

One step forwards, two steps back?

Footnote

Here you can find the rest of my ‘photos from ten years ago‘ series.

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Some history

Kensington has a long history of flour milling, as detailed in the ‘Kensington & Flour Milling Heritage Precinct’ section of the Melbourne Planning Scheme:

In the 1880s several new mills were built on the trunk railways including James Gillespie’s Kensington Roller Flour Mill of 1886-7, Kimpton’s Eclipse Hungarian Roller Flour mills of 1887, and Thomas Brunton’s Australian Flour Mills in 1893-4. Brokhoff biscuits located further south, was also built around 1890 with the intervening space filled with various stores and warehouses serving to milling and baking trade. James Minifie & Co (former head miller at Dight’s Falls Mill and Kempton’s) built his own Victoria Roller Flour Mill in 1906-7 in South Kensington.

With the Kimpton’s mill…

Allied Mills photo

Developing into the flour mill operated by Allied Pinnacle today.

Kimpton’s original mill was burnt out and rebuilt in 1904 and became known as the Kimpton No. 1 Mill, until closed in 1971. The Gillespie mill was bought by Kimpton in 1904 following the liquidation of Gillespie’s Victorian interests, becoming Kimpton No. 2 Mill. It was refitted in 1913, closed in 1976 and demolished in 1982.

The Kimpton No. 3 mill was built in 1927 on the corner of Elizabeth and Arden Street. A merger of three prominent milling firms created Kimpton Minifie McLennan Pty Ltd in the 1960s, which was bought out by Allied Mills in 1981, then Goodman Fielder. As a result, a new mill was erected north of the silos in the 1990s.

Moving grain by train

Grain is grown across Western Victoria.

Being moved by truck from farm to silo.

Then loaded into trains.

Then off to the city.

Headed through the countryside.

Until the train enters Melbourne.

Grain trains take the freight tracks past South Kensington station.

Until they reach North Melbourne, where the engines have to run around to the other end of train.

With that done, it’s just a short trip over to Kensington station.

The train stops in the platform.

And is then pushed back into the flour mill siding.

The wagons are then pushed through the unloading shed.

Two wagons at a time.

With the grain being unloaded between the tracks via bottom discharge doors.

Until the entire train is done.

Once the train is empty, it’s time to change the points.

Then push the train back out onto the main line.

Then change ends, back to North Melbourne, change ends a second time, and finally back to the country for another load.

And all this while sharing the tracks with suburban trains on the Craigieburn line.

What is the grain turned into?

In 2011 Allied Mills described their operations at Kensington in a submission to the City of Melbourne for the Arden-Macaulay Structure Plan.

The Allied Mills Site has been an operational flour mill since 1887. Allied Mills manufactures and distributes milling based products including but not limited to:

a) flours for bread, cake, pastry, biscuits, noodle and culinary applications;
b) premixes for bread, cake, donut and culinary applications; and
c) specialty meals, semolinas and brans.

The composition of the flour milling industry has changed drastically over the last century. In the 1870s there were 160 flour mills in Victoria which has now been reduced to three. Allied Mills owns and operates eight flour mills nationally, located in each Australian state. In Victoria, the sites are based in Kensington and Ballarat, with Kensington being one of the largest Australian sites and representing approximately one fifth of its total operations. It is therefore strategically essential to Allied Mills’ operations.

Allied Mills is an integral component of the Australian flour milling industry. Approximately 90% of the Australian flour milling industry is comprised of three major companies of broadly equal market share. These are Allied Mills, George Weston Foods and Manildra. Allied Mills presently services the vast majority of all multinational food manufacturer flour requirements in Australia, most of whom are common Australian household names. Further, Allied Mills holds a majority portion of the bulk flour market and significant portions of both the bagged flour market and bakery mix market.

By 2017 Allied Mills was processing 800,000 tonnes of wheat and speciality grains a year into flour and other products across their operations.

And how many trains?

Back in 2017 grain trains were visiting Kensington three times a week, each train made up of 20 wagons, each loaded with 55 tonnes of grain – or 3300 tonnes of grain a week.

Compare this how much grain a truck can move – between 16 and 65.6 tonnes – or the equivalent of 50+ trucks driving through suburban Kensington.

What about the future

With the warehouses around Kensington subject to the Arden-Macaulay Structure Plan, how long will a flour mill survive in the middle of a forest of apartments?

But a bigger problem is the sourcing of grain in Victoria following the Murray Basin Rail Project – flagged as an issue in 2017.

Exacerbating this issue is the change of rail gauge in western Victoria from broad gauge to standard gauge. As the rail line and siding at Kensington is broad gauge, the site can no longer accept grain delivery by train from western Victorian growers. This has the impact of reducing grain supply via rail and increasing grain delivery by truck increasing the truck movements at the site.

But there is a possible solution – transporting grain in containers.

Or the ‘nuclear’ option – relocation.

The Sydney experience

Until 2009 the Mungo Scott flour mill operated at Summer Hill in Sydney’s inner west, and was supplied by train by trains on the Rozelle goods line.

Until it was replaced by a new flour mill at Picton, south of Sydney, built on a greenfields site right beside the Main South railway line.

Which allows both the receival of grain and despatch of flour by rail.

I wonder how much longer until rising land values at Kensington leads to a similar move in Victoria?

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We start in the Geelong suburb of North Shore, where I found a Y class locomotive shunting a rake of loaded log wagons into the Midway wood chipping plant.

The logs were sourced from native forests in East Gippsland, loaded onto trains in Bairnsdale, transported to Geelong by rail, fed through a massive wood chipper, then sent to Japan to be turned into paper. The export of wood chips continues today, but the transport of logs by rail ceased in 2009, following the destruction of the forests in the 2009 Black Saturday bush fires.

Down the road at Corio I found another freight train – this time a load of export grain being hauled by a company called El Zorro.

The company had been running trains for some time, but hit the big time in 2008 after winning a grain haulage contract from AWB Limited. For the next few years they were a railfan favourite, operating trains across Victoria using a hired fleet of locomotives, many of them ancient museum pieces, until the company struck financial difficulties and was wound up in 2013.

The return of grain traffic to the Victorian rail network also saw some much overdue investment on the railway line to Mildura, when $73 million was provided by the State and Federal governments to bring the line speed back up to 80 km/h – a task that required replacing two in every five timber sleepers along the 525 kilometre line.

Work started at Geelong then continued north, reaching Mildura by the second half of 2009. In the end this was only a patch up job – a decade later the $440 million Murray Basin Rail Project is rebuilding the line a second time, but this time with longer lasting concrete sleepers, and converted to standard gauge so that trains from anywhere in Australia can travel on it.

Meanwhile at Southern Cross Station, I was catching the last train of the night to Geelong.

Operated by a single Sprinter railcar, a practice banned since 2014 due to level crossing activation issues.

Speaking of level crossings, this one west of Geelong at Gheringhap will never have any activation issues.

Nor will this one on a freight siding – protected by a traffic controller holding a stop/go paddle!

But a decade ago the biggest concern regarding level crossings was trucks failing to stop at them – the 11 V/Line passengers killed following a collision at Kerang in 2007 still fresh in the public’s mind.

The solution – Active Advanced Warning Signs (AAWS) located on the approach to level crossings on major highways.

These effectiveness of these additional warning devices in improving level crossing compliance was evaluated in 2009 – the verdict being ‘inconclusive’ due to limited data, but the rollout has continued.

Footnote

Here you can find the rest of my ‘photos from ten years ago‘

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