Once upon a time, Melbourne's suburban rail network was served by suburban goods trains,
which collected and delivered just about anything you can imagine from locations all around
the system. While freight trains do still run on several suburban lines en-route to
outer suburban or country locations, seeing a freight train shunting at or near a suburban
station is now extremely rare – in fact, it really only happens in one place.
This is the Allied Pinnacle Flour Mill, in the inner north-west suburb of Kensington.
The mill requires a huge amount of wheat, and while some of that does arrive in trucks,
the majority is delivered by rail using a dedicated siding – and it's a really interesting operation.
Given its location in dense suburbia, the siding has a minimal and compact track layout
which requires some complicated shunting moves. Adding to this, the siding
branches off the Craigieburn suburban line, which carries frequent electric suburban trains,
as well as regional trains on the Seymour and Shepparton lines, and special trains bound
for Flemington Racecourse and the Showgrounds. It's often argued in the transport planning
world that freight trains and commuter trains shouldn't mix, but this is a great example
of where they do, seemingly with very few problems. The train is currently operated
by Southern Shourthaul Railroad, which is great news for enthusiasts because they use
a variety of ancient first-generation diesel locomotives dating from the 50s and 60s, including
classic B and S class streamliners, in a variety of liveries. Now in a moment I'll describe
the shunting operations that happen within the siding its self, but first we need to
take a look at how the train even gets in there – and that's an equally interesting story.
So, the train loads wheat out at one of several locations in northern or north-western
Victoria, then makes the long journey into Melbourne – often running overnight.
It comes into the city on the goods lines from the west, but there's no direct route to Kensington
from there, and the train will have to reverse direction twice to access the mill siding
Interacting with several passenger routes in the process. The train approaches Spion Kop Junction
on a dedicated goods line, which is shown here in orange. It crosses part of
the Regional Rail Link on the flat here – that’s the route taken by V/line trains to access
Southern Cross platforms 1 to 8, so it can be quite busy. Our train then pulls up parallel
to the North Melbourne Arrivals Yard, and the locomotives uncouple from the train
Running around via one of the sidings. At the Down end of the yard, the locos need to cross the
RRL again – twice – in order to reverse direction. They then couple back onto the
wagons, and wait for a suitable gap between passenger trains before departing.
Just quickly, the diagram I'm using here is recycled from my North Melbourne junction video where I
explained this whole area in more detail, so if you're interested and haven't seen it
already, please do check that one out. Departing out through the junction, the train crosses
onto the high level suburban lines to Kensington, this time occupying three of the four RRL tracks.
The high level route keeps our train separate from the Sunbury and Werribee lines on a flyover,
before passing the flour mill and joining the main Craigieburn suburban line.
The train crawls slowly into Kensington Platform 2, dropping off a crew member at the Up end of
the platform – who then communicates with the driver via radio, instructing them to
stop once the rear of the train is clear of the Macaulay Road level crossing.
The shunter will then advise the driver when this signal changes to 'Proceed'
Indicating the level crossing is activated, and the route has been set to cross the Up line and enter the mill.
The shunter then walks with the rear of the train, talking the driver all the way
back into the siding. This is the only place on a Melbourne suburban line where
you will routinely see a freight train set back through a level crossing, and it's worth
considering that while this is done at very low speed under the watchful eye of the shunter,
there is obviously no whistle or headlight at this end of the train. So once the train
is safely in the siding clear of the main line, the unloading process begins. The hopper
wagons drop their wheat into a pit between the rails, which is located here. Now in most
other places, you would simply run the entire train slowly through the unloader, but there
isn't space to do that here, as the whole train won't fit on the far side. So the train
arrives into the other track, then has to be broken up and shunted through in small
sections. This bit of track here – the shunting neck - is only long enough to fit one locomotive,
and two grain hoppers. So the usual practice is to uncouple the locos, then separate one
off to do the shunting – leaving any additional locomotives at the Down end of the siding.
The single locomotive runs up through the unloader, into the shunting neck,
and then back onto the train.
The first two wagons are uncoupled, and the loco pulls them forward,
into the neck clear of the points
then propels them back onto the unloading track.
The unloader is only the length of a single wagon, so two stops are made to discharge the grain.
The loco then returns to the other track and collects another two wagons, and repeats the process,
slowly breaking apart the train, dumping the wheat then coupling the wagons back together on
the other track. Obviously this is very time consuming, and results in the wagons being
shuffled into a different order in the newly made up train. As a side note, this stunning
looking B class you’re watching is B75, which entered service in July 1953.
For perspective, that was only 15 months after R761 first hit the rails.
Here’s a photo I took of it in 2007,
and I don’t think anybody would have believed at that point that it still had a
future in commercial freight service, but - here we are! If you’re wondering what
this shed thing positioned over the siding is for, into the late 2000s, the mill shunt
was done by a Rail Tractor, which lived here under the shed when not in use. So, this operation
has had a big increase in horsepower since then! Once the shunting process is complete,
the locomotives are coupled back together and positioned on the Up end of the consist
ready to depart. When a path is available, the train leaves the mill by reversing the
process it used to come in – the train sets back out of the siding with the shunter again
guiding the driver verbally by radio. The train crosses the Up line and enters the Down
platform, continuing to push back until the locos are clear of the crossing.
It will then depart through the crossover onto the Up line,
Diverging onto the high lines and back up
to Spion Kop, then to the Arrivals Yard where the locos will run around once more ready
to head back out west. You might wonder why the train pushes back into the Down platform
when departing the mill, rather than into the Up platform which would keep the Down
line free for other trains. Well firstly, the signalling doesn't allow it, as the Up
line is unidirectional with automatic signals approaching the platform. But also, it isn't
physically possible to run into the Up platform, because this set of points here is a single
slip – that is, it's a diamond crossing, with curves on this side, but not on this side.
On some occasions if the empty train is heading for a destination up the north-east
mainline, the locomotives will be positioned on the Down end for departure, and the train
can head straight out towards the country via Essendon on the suburban line. It's worth
noting that this crossover can also be used by suburban trains to terminate and return
to the city if required, although I don't think this is very common.
So, the Kensington grain shunt is a pretty cool example of a bulk goods operation happening in a small
space alongside residential suburbia. The current shunting arrangement works fine for
now while the Craigieburn line has a 20 minute off-peak frequency, but it will become more
challenging when that frequency inevitably gets increased to 10 minutes or better, and
eventually the grain train may be forced to operate only late at night. Either way, it's
a great compact idea for a model railway!
Now if you're a regular here you'll know that
I usually like to use all my own footage for these videos, however there are several parts
of the Kensington shunt that I'd never managed to see for myself. Thanks very much to Pannier
who provided many of the shots in this video, including the one you're watching right now.
If you like Australian railway content I highly recommend you head over and check out his channel.
Thanks for watching!