In the old days

Timber tramways would transport freshly cut logs to sawmills deep in the forest.

Museums Victoria image MM 5821

With the sawn timber then being loaded onto main line trains for transport to the construction industry.

Photo by Weston Langford

But by World War II the timber tramways were gone: replaced by road transport, and supplying a network of town based sawmills established following the 1939 Black Friday bushfires.

Enter woodchips

In the 1960s the timber industry switched from sawlogs to clearfell logging for export woodchips.

Initially this traffic was by road, but in 1999 newly privatised freight operator Freight Australia started to move this traffic to rail.

Logs were loaded onto flat wagons at Bairnsdale and Wodonga.

Hauled by train to Geelong.

Where they were unloaded at the Midway woodchip plant and sent through the chipper.

To be loaded by conveyor into ships.

Bound for Japanese paper mills.

These log trains continued running until 2009, when the Black Saturday bushfires burnt out the source of the logs.

And now containers

In the 2000s another way of moving timber by rail emerged – sawlogs stuffed inside standard ISO containers, ready to be exported by sea.

Logs are delivered to the rail terminal by truck and then stockpiled.

The loader grabs a claw full of logs, and loads them into a cradle.

Once the cradle is full, it is placed in front of an empty 40 foot container.

A specially fitted loader then pushes the logs into the container.

Them the forklift takes the empty log cradle away for reloading.

And so the process repeats.

Current containerised log rail services include:

• Bathurst to Port Botany, NSW: 175,000 tonnes/year by Pacific National
• Goulburn to Port Botany, NSW: 100,000 tonnes/year by Crawford Freightlines
• Werris Creek to Port Botany, NSW: 230,000 tonnes/year by Crawford Freightlines
• Bordertown and Flinders Adelaide Container Terminal, SA: Bowmans Rail

Footnote: log wagons

Moving logs by container on standard flat wagons is a lot more flexible than constructing dedicated log wagons, which Freight Australia discovered when trying to expand their fleet.

Freight Australia found a new emerging market in transporting plantation logs and to capitalise, the Sale to Bairnsdale line had to be reopened. For the log business to expand, wagons that could carry logs were in urgent demand.

In order to satisfy this demand, older disused container flats, open wagons and louvre vans were all identified as having the potential to be converted into log wagons by having their sides and canopies removed. Further checks were undertaken to determine the suitability of each wagon to support the load where the stanchion cradles were to be attached.

The container flats and the open wagons proved straight forward, however, the VLEX louvre van design had to be analysed as its canopy needed to be fully removed. The analysis revealed, as with many of the original PTC wagons, that the center sill on the vans actually took 95+ % of the load.

The cradle frames for the logs were then designed so that they could be huck bolted onto the various wagon classes, this allowed for easy replacement if damaged and the ability to convert these wagons back to container flats if the need arose.

Flexibility and the ability to convert wagons readily for any commodity was a bonus for these wagons however, unlike previous log wagons built, these wagons were not fitted with bulkheads. To fit bulkheads to these wagons would mean excessive extra costs, shorten their effective carrying load length and reduce their flexibility. To enable these wagons to be accredited for operation in Victoria, Freight Australia had to demonstrate the safe securing of the logs namely in the longitudinal direction without bulkheads being fitted.

The ROA Manual of Engineering Standards and Practices requires an overall load sustaining minimum capacity in the longitudinal direction equal to the gravity force of the load multiplied by 4. i.e. survive a 4G de-acceleration. Freight Australia demonstrated the safety of these wagons, loaded with logs and why bulkheads were not required by: –

• Carrying out impact trials of Log wagons to determine the load movements at speeds between 8kph to 15kph. These dramatic test could not replicate 4G as to do so would have meant destroying a wagon however, it did demonstrate the controlled way the load shifted. The mass of the logs tied down and jammed between the stanchions and the friction between the logs meant the log movements were contained within the outline diagram and none of the logs broke away from their total mass;

• Modelling the forces and the loads required to move the loaded logs between the stanchions and calculating the sufficiency of the log restraining systems;

• Reviewing other Log Transporters and their practices. This included the American Railroads, who are governed by the AAR guidelines, and more importantly our competitors in the road industry who follow the Department of Transport Guidelines. Both operations aren’t required to operate their vehicles with bulkheads.

Further reading

• Shipping and handling costs for Australia’s wood product exports

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Chasing trains

I drove out to Moorabool, west of Geelong to photograph a freight train. As soon as I stepped out of the car and locked the door I realised I’d left my keys inside – but thankfully I still had my camera, so I didn’t miss the shot.

A blast from the past was this train operated by 707 Operations bound for Geelong.

Steam locomotive R707 and diesel T413 hauled the train to Marshall and back, with a spin on the turntable at Geelong putting the steam engine facing the right way before the return leg to Melbourne.

Another unusual train headed through Geelong was a Hitachi suburban set usually used in Melbourne, being hauled by Seymour Rail Heritage Centre’s freshly restored diesel locomotive T378 for refurbishment work at the Ballarat Workshops.

This Hitachi train was back in service by August 2009 but was put into storage a few years later, eventually being retired in 2015, and transferred to Bendigo for scrapping in May 2018.

Back in 2008 small rail freight operator El Zorro was running the container train to Warrnambool. If they left the Port of Melbourne too late they would lose their ‘slot’ on the single track beyond Geelong, and would get dumped in the siding at Lara station until a path was available.

I was commuting from Geelong to Melbourne multiple days a week, so I’d keep my eye out at Lara for it – jumping off the train for a photo, then catching the next service on to Melbourne.

At Flinders Street Station one morning I stumbled upon this odd looking train.

It is track evaluation vehicle ‘EM100’ and traverses the network on a regular basis, with an array of sensors looking for track faults. It is still in service today, just renumbered ‘IEV100’ and with a snazzy looking Metro Trains Melbourne livery on it.

But somewhere way off my usual beat was the Montague Street bridge in South Melbourne.

Unlike today the bridge was quite anonymous, the feature catching my eye being that only two of the four bridges had tracks across them. Originally built to serve the Montague shipping shed, by late 2009 the tram tracks at Southbank Depot had been extended west over the bridge to stable the newly arrived ‘Bumblebee’ trams.

Railway upgrades

Work was continuing on the new concourse at North Melbourne station, as seen in previous posts in this series.

While another structure being built over active railway lines was the ‘Media House’ development for The Age, located on the southern side of Collins Street, opposite Southern Cross Station.

A massive crane was required to place the steel beams and concrete deck over the railway line.

Which permitted more conventional methods of construction to be used for the office building on top.

A short distance away the Dynon Port Rail Link was also well underway, removing a bottleneck that blocked road traffic every time a train entered the Port of Melbourne.

The network of flyovers replaced a single track level crossing on Footscray Road, allowing more trains to access the port.

As well as eliminating a seven track wide crossing inside the port itself.

Another project aimed at improving rail freight was the Corio Independent Goods Line at the Port of Geelong.

Work started in 2008 with the first train running in October the same year, but in the decade since is better described as a white elephant, with no new rail traffic being attracted to the port.

And the other bits

Down in Geelong work on the Geelong Ring Road was progressing, with the Lewis Bandt Bridge over the Moorabool River pretty much complete.

While a short distance south work on the bridge over the Barwon River had started.

Another road project underway was the Monash-CityLink-West Gate Upgrade. No – not the current ‘upgrade’ adding a new lane to the M1 freeway, but the project a decade ago that added a new to the M1 freeway.

For Engineering Week I ended up atop the freeway viaduct through South Melbourne.

Seeing how the new bridge spans were being tied into the existing viaduct.

Allowing an extra road lane to be squeezed in.

Over in Docklands things looked quite different, with Southern Cross Station still clearly visible from the top level of what was then called Telstra Dome.

But plenty of construction was taking place, with heritage listed No. 2 Goods Shed being converted into offices.

Chopped in half in the early 2000s to make way for the extension of Collins Street into the new Docklands development, work was underway to plug up the gaps at either end, then restore the remaining structure.

But the best view of all was from up inside the roof of what was then called Telstra Dome.

My tour went for a walk through the roof trusses.

Looking down on the grow lights on the playing surface.

And the rows of seats down below.

Footnote

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

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