Victoria was the first Australian colony to open a steam railway, in 1854,
and for the rest of the nineteenth century it remained the continent's most
advanced and intensive railway. Melbourne was Australia's first city to have
suburban railways, which were also the first to be electrifies, beginning in
1919.
This book tells the story of the early railways opened in the wake of the
gold rushes to Ballarat and Bendigo, extravagantly engineered as none ever would
be in the future. It then moves on to examine the role of railways in the
development of the colony during the nineteenth century both reflected and made
Victorian history as a whole, especially during the boom and bust of the 1880s
and 1890s.
During the Clapp era of the 1920s and 1930s Victorian Railways projected an
aura of sophistication and style, whereas after World War II there was a
constant challenge and readjustment, as other transport modes became dominant.
This culminated in a long crisis through the last decades of the twentieth
century, out of which emerged a railway system radically restructured in almost
every way.
The colourful characters, political intrigues and enormous social impact of
Victoria's railways, as well as their constantly changing and fascinating
technology, are major themes of this book.
Contents:
Foreword
Acknowledgements
Notes of Measurements and Currency
Locomotive Types
1. Squatters and Railways
- Introduction
- The Port Phillip District
- The Railway Book of the Late 1840s
- The Colony of Victoria
2. Marvellous Melbourne and its Early Railways 1854-78
- The Melbourne and Hobson's Bay Railway Company
- Spreading Railways and Sprawling Suburbs
- The Essendon Railway
3. Rails to the Goldfields: The Failure of Privately Funded Grand Schemes
- The Melbourne, Mount Alexander and Murray River Railway Company
- The Geelong and Melbourne Railway
- Planning the Main Lines
- The Completion of the Williamstown Railway
- The Main Lines Planned and Financed
- Building the Goldfields Railways
- The Opening of the Goldfields Railways
4. The Higinbotham Era: Coloured Lines, Light Lines and Borders Breached
- The Legacy of the Murray Railway
- Echuca as a Centre of Australian Inland Trade
- The North-Eastern Line and the Push for Narrow Gauge
- The Light Lines of the 1870s
- Locomotives in the Higinbotham Era
- Purchase of the Melbourne and Hobson's Bay United Railway Company and
the End of the Higinbotham Era
5. Climax and Denouement: Victorian Railways in the 1880s and 1890s
- Railway Management and Reform in the Early 1880s
- The Speight Era
- The 'Octopus Acts' and Railway Building in the 1880s
- Speight's Departure and its Aftermath
- Victorian Railways During the Depressed 1890s
- Railways and the Victorian Economy
- Railways and Social Life
6. The Twilight of the Developmental Railway: Victorian Railways from Federation
to the 1920s
- The New Political and Technological Context
- Railway Management, Industrial Conflict and Political Struggles
- The Tait Era
- Railways for Development in the New Century
- Narrow Gauge Railways
7. The End of Domination: The Clapp Era 1920-39 and the Transformation of
Traffic
- Silos Across the Landscape
- Newport and its Producers
- Clapp and Competition
- New Equipment for a New Age
8. Railways for a Changing City: Melbourne's Suburban System in the Twentieth
Century
- Flinders Street Station and the Consolidation of a Radical System
- The Electric Street Railways
- Electrification of Melbourne's Suburban Railways
- The Suburban System in the Inter-War Period
- The Dilemmas of the Mass Motor Age
- The Loop
- Reworking the System from the 1920s
- The Era of Privatisation
9. From War to Peace: Victoria and the Beginnings of National Railway Planning
1939-70
- The War and Victorian Railways
- Victoria's Post-War Railways
- The Coming of the Diesel Age
- National Planning and Gauge Standardisation 1945-78
10. The Struggle for Relevance I: Rail Freight in the Motor Age 1970-2004
- The Transformation of Railway Freight Operations 1970-90
- National Railway Integration and Privitisation
- The Privitisation of Victorian Freight Railways
11. The Struggle for Relevance II: The Victorian Passenger Train in the Jet Age
- The Era of the Interstate Express
- The Quest for Rationalisation
- From Nostalgia to High Speed
Select Bibliography
Notes
Notes to Illustrations
Index
