City of Darebin Heritage Study Volume 1 Draft Thematic

VOLUME 2: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORYFigure 12Rose Shamrock and ThistleHotel, Preston, c1900.[DHE, ID 349]3.2 Travelling by trainAlthough train services were established in other parts of suburban Melbourne as early as the1850s and extended to suburbs further out during the following decades, Darebin and othernorthern suburbs waited much longer for an efficient service. The lack of an efficient serviceretarded development at first, but the eventual construction of a direct route to the city and theelectrification of the network by the 1920s played an important role in the development boomthat swept much of Darebin during the inter-war period.Establishing the railway networkThe land boom was accompanied by a grand government plan to extend Victoria’s railwaynetwork, authorised by a series of Railway Construction Acts in the 1880s, nicknamed the‘Octopus Act’. Although some of the new railways were successful, others were unjustified anduneconomic. The most notorious of these was the Outer Circle Line, first proposed in the1870s, to connect the Gippsland line from Oakleigh with Melbourne by circling the easternsuburbs and sweeping across the north to connect with Spencer Street. The proposal wasstrongly supported by the northern municipalities including Heidelberg, Northcote andBrunswick as a way of bringing rail services to their communities. One of the first sections ofthe Outer Circle to be built was the Clifton Hill to Alphington line, opened in 1883. This wasthe first railway in the area, but it consisted of only two miles of track, and was not connectedto Melbourne. A planned line from Flinders Street to Heidelberg via Richmond, Collingwoodand Northcote did not eventuate, so the Clifton Hill to Alphington line, was of limited use toDarebin residents, and was known as the ‘nowhere to nowhere line’. However local residentsorganised a service using a gas engine fitted to a carriage, which operated briefly (Garden,1984:219-21; Lemon 1983:84-8).Part of the delay over the construction of railways for the northern suburbs was thedisagreement over the routes through the inner suburbs. Eventually the line to Heidelberg,using the ‘nowhere to nowhere line’ was opened in 1888, but took such a zig-zag route fromthe terminus at Spencer Street through Fitzroy and Collingwood, that the trip to Heidelbergtook an hour and a half. Furthermore it only served the southern part of Darebin. At last, in1889, the line to Whittlesea via Preston was opened giving a railway right through Darebin,but it also took a round about route from Spencer Street station via Royal Park and NorthFitzroy. In 1891the Outer Circle line from Oakleigh to Fairfield was completed, crossing theYarra on a steel truss bridge to Fulham Grange station. The bridge is now part of the ChandlerHighway. The Outer Circle Railway was an instant failure and by 1895 it was closed (Garden,1984:219-21). A short length of the line was later used as a still siding for the Australian PaperMill. The embankment for the Fulham Grange station can still be seen.35