Warrnambool railway line
railway line in Victoria, Australia
The Warrnambool railway line is a railway serving the south west of Victoria, Australia. Running from the western Melbourne suburb of Newport through the cities of Geelong and Warrnambool, the line once terminated at the coastal town of Port Fairy before being truncated to Dennington (just west of Warrnambool). This closed section of line has been converted into the 37 km long Port Fairy to Warrnambool Rail Trail. The line continues to see both passenger and freight services today.
Services
Metro Trains Melbourne operates suburban passenger services along the inner section of the line as far as Werribee, while V/Line operates the Geelong and the Warrnambool services. For 11 years, from 19 September 1993 until 31 August 2004, the Melbourne to Warrnambool passenger service was run by the private West Coast Railway company. Freight services also run on the line, operated by Pacific National and, for a brief period, El Zorro to the WestVic container terminal, between Warrnambool and Dennington.
History
The Warrnambool line was originally built by the private Geelong and Melbourne Railway Company and opened on 25 June 1857, the line being sold to the Victorian Railways in 1860. The line was designed by English engineer Edward Snell, and built as a single track. The standard of engineering was called into question as the light timber bridges required extra maintenance and had a short life span, while the decision to build only a single track resulted in slow and infrequent trains.
The public source identifies “Warrnambool railway line” as railway line in Victoria, Australia. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Warrnambool, railway and line.
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This entry incorporates text from “Warrnambool railway line” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.