The Somerton Rail Link and Wallan Electrification Projects Explained
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- Опубликовано: 25 июл 2024
- In this video, we take a look at the Somerton Rail Link (including Wallan Electrification) project. This project includes upgrades to the Upfield Line, extension to Craigieburn and then rail electrification to Wallan.
00:00 Intro
00:27 History / Context
01:36 Initial Plans for Reopening
02:29 Upgrades to the existing Upfield Line
03:36 Upgrades to Upfield Station
04:33 Reopening the Upfield-Somerton Line
05:31 Roxburgh Park - Craigieburn
06:45 Electrification to Wallan
07:40 Justification for the project
08:59 Outro
Sources:
vicsig.net/infrastructure/lin...
www.planning.vic.gov.au/__dat...
upfieldtransportalliance.org/...
www.infrastructurevictoria.co...
vicsig.net/infrastructure/lin...
www.ptv.vic.gov.au/assets/PTV...
And various others
Donnybrook footage is from Rowan Scott: • Donnybrook Station - V...
Photos are mine or from vicsig, state library, prov, various others
Music by Gyvus 
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This would be such an easy project to get done. In the age of the SRL, Labor needs to prove that it can still deliver short-term projects or risk losing support. The connectivity boost in the far north would be great, too.
They can just tap that magic money tree again.
@@xr6ladthey killed the money tree after deciding SRL should be fully underground. 😂
something like this is much more needed than SRL ever will be.
@@Alexander_Dunn nah I don't agree with that at all. The SRL is massively needed if we want to seriously challenge car dependency and provide massive upzoning and affordable housing in Melbourne. But, it needs to be shown that the SRL can be done _alongside_ other projects.
@@Alexander_Dunn Tell me you don't understand SRL without telling me you don't understand SRL... It's a housing prject as much as it is a public transport project
The Upfield line is the Sandringham line of the north. Mostly forgotten and as it’s not part of a major rail corridor is not really a priority. It just doesn’t get as much use as the Pakenham/Sunshine/Sunbury line ect.
This is the purpose of the extension from Upfield to Wallan, Upfield can serve as an alternative corridor when the Broadmeadows and Essendon corridor becomes overcrowd and cannot cope with anymore capacity? also what about Alamein line?
Yeah but if Melbourne is growing then there's no way this line should ever be turned into a Light Rail service.
Leave it as it is.
@@yiannisdanatzis2889 The Craigieburn line is running at 130% in the peaks. This project is needed to relieve the Craigieburn corridor.
The Sandringham Line is nowhere near as badly off as the Upfield line. On weekdays off peak trains run every 15 mins. Of course the Sandringham Line is not as a priority as the Pakenham line as it does carries nowhere the patronage of the Pakenham line.
Having redundancy is a massive bonus. Could divert passengers from Craigieburn and beyond any time there are works/closures/delays on the Essendon section
Would be really happy if this gets built. Duplication to Upfield and Wallan is a must and new stations along the way including Campbellfield.
I'm not moving for the next 4 hours, this will be hype!!!
Hopefully Donnybrook and Wallan don’t become the new Melton and Tarneit/Wyndham Vale with overcrowding V Line services
I grew up, and still live in Broadmeadows. I love watching the old footage, especially the photos of the old Campbellfield station being surrounded by virtually empty land!
Upfield line truly the line of all time
I remember when this line used to run from 5 am to 7 pm Monday to Saturday, was closed on Sundays, and half the trains would terminate at Gowrie.
It didn't become a Daily service until works done by the then Kennett Government in the 1990s.......one of their few transit projects in that era.
A rail link between Upfield and Roxburgh Park makes sense, as it would service a growing part of Melbourne's outer north that's still poorly serviced by public transport.
Great video here and please keep up the good work 👍👍👍👍👍.
Fun walking with you!
Good job. My head almost fell off at the end when you suggested the state Libs would support the line work because here in SA, the Libs have been consistently against train/tram extension and improvement. They constantly use the terms Waste of Money & White Elephant.
Wonderful to see Victoria doing so well.
The 2003 Hitachi transfers was because the line was cut off between North Melbourne and Flemington Bridge due to the elevated CityLink toll road construction overhead meaning to swap out sets for servicing they had to be loco hauled from Upfield to Somerton.
A relocated Upfield station to the south side of Barry Rd could eliminated most Level Crossing uses unless a train was to enter or leave the stabling yard.
As for increasing services on the Craigieburn line they could look at utilising the Jacana Albion SG & BG "Goods" line as if it was tri tracked with dual gauge (SG & BG) all the BG V/Line services from Seymour, Shepparton could run along there and jump onto the Regional Rail tracks at Sunshine for an express run into the city, the extra bridge over the Maribrynong River for the Airport Rail could be handy here as well.
I think the problem that has been raised with the Albion-Jacana line is the restricted speed due to track quality, but it's an idea worth investigating.
There have been other concepts of potentially running the Bendigo and Seymour corridor trains through the airport as well which I think is probably a better long-term solution.
@MetroManMelbourne nothing to do with track conditions. Dual Gauge is limited to 80kph.
@@bigman4225 that just compounds the poor state of the BG track in this instance I believe.
@MetroManMelbourne No! Wherever there is Dual Gauge track it is limited to 80 no matter what!
@@bigman4225 yeah no I'm aware of that.
Love the content Mate! Keep the good train of content rolling!
Excellent research and presentation!
I just love these kind of plans. I really do love it when train companies extebd thier lines. Would love to see more of this
Awesome to have you back!
Amazing video, deserves 1k+ likes and 10k+ views!
Another great video of your usual high quality
It would be nice if they triplicated the line in the inner suburbs so they could some some express services but that’s unlikely due to the row constraints and the section being elevated by the time they get around to it
Agreed but it’s incredibly tight so I can’t see this being viable without resumption of surrounding properties in a lot of places (aka political suicide)
Triplication is quite frankly a bad idea all around - you only really get a small benefit for quite a large cost - in the long term I could see some justification to trying to build a quadruple track section heading from Melbourne out North, but I don't think that should be prioritised for some time to come.
Upgrading to triple minimum on trunk routes should have been the priority for future network growth, particularly out to Dandenong. Unfortunately, we are now stuck with 2 tracks in many places due to the idiocy and lack of foresight behind those who were promoting Skyrail and level crossing removals...
@@josephchristianson3001 Not really, there are still a number of ways to get quad track out to Dandenong (I've got a video on that in the works). Plus for most lines CBTC signalling and higher frequencies is better than triple track
I got told for ages that the reason the Upfield Line couldn't be extended or duplicated was land acquisition, but finding out that not only is the space there, but there is pre-existing infrastructure to do so? It's insane this hasn't been a priority, even just duplication.
It’s the future high speed rail link into Melbourne.
Can’t wait!
Some of the projects that are needed in the next 30 years are the Airport Rail link, Metro Tunnel (which is basically done), Reopening of the Mildura and Mornington Line (or at least an extension to Baxter), the Extension of the Upfield line, SRL East (at the very least), and further duplication of the Hurstbridge line (taking into account the Copper Butterflies in Eltham) as well as the duplication and upgrading of track infrastructure on several other existing lines.
An interesting undertaking would also be to fully reopen the Healseville line, as the section from Yarra Glen to Healseville is already going to be complete by 2025/6 (ish), not to mention the amount of ruralisation and growth happening in the Yarra Valley is only increasing, and will only continue to increase in the coming decades.
Awesome video
Solid video! I had the pleasure of travelling on the train from Warrnambool to Melb and return in October 2023 for the long weekend (driving from Mt Gambier SA). How I LONG for the line to be resurrected here, then standardised from Mt Gambier to Wolsely. Could you do a vid on that please? Stir up the politicians! Lol
My partner works for Mitchell Shire and she has talked about this... Can't remember if she mentioned a time frame, but electrification to Wallan/Beveridge is happening
been on a few fan trips with the old wooden country cars which always hit the platform at Coburg.
Let's don't forget the extension of the Cranbourne line, the line needs to be extended to Clyde because of the amount residential and industrial development is happening, and the tracks and reservation is still in place from when trains used to travel to Gippsland.
its crazy how much growth Melbourne has had in the west and north how much its been ignored
Awesome video. I wasn’t aware this project is still on the cards, great that it is. I walked this track about 5 years back which I made a video of too on my channel. I had heard that they had fenced and blocked off access since, but glad you can still get in, I wanna head back there soon.
Look they don’t make it easy to walk it (for good reason), but it’s not particularly difficult either.
They have 3 different tram lines and multiple buses in the Brunswick/Coburg area people can also travel on. Try going out to the western suburbs and see how you get on.
Bingo. That anyone thinks this is a priority boggles the mind.
That’s certainly true for the inner section, but by far the majority of the benefit of these projects goes to Donnybrook and wallan which are in a similar situation to the western suburbs. Ideally you would really electrify this + Melton + Wyndham vale at the same time.
Extending the line to wallan provides no extra service to Brunswick/Coburg, it just uses the existing corridor to provide services to suburbs in the far north who are in similar situations to those in the west.
@@xr6lad We can have more than one priority. There are so many rail projects across Victoria that should've been built decades ago.
You completely missed the point of this project. "They have 2 different tram lines & multiple buses in the Footscray area that people can travel on. Try going out to the outer northern suburbs and see how you get on"
I didn't know there was that section of gantlet track there. The only other place I've seen it is on the east side of the Spencer street railyards where there is/was a short length of broad gauge and standard gauge.
That was to allow them to run car trains from ford to Sydney on standard gauge. It’s pretty rare though yes.
Here we go
Nice
Few points to note.
1: Upfield sidings 3 and A (outer two) have been deliberately built far enough away from sidings 1 and 2 (centre two; 1 being the old single track towards Somerton) to permit full security fences to be installed between A&1, and 2&3, so Upfield would still have 2 sidings undisturbed by the project. There is additional width usable outside A and 3 sidings, so it may be that there's extra sidings added there; alternatively, A and 3 sidings could be extended to take 2x6 car sets each.
2: Craigieburn yard can't be expanded easily; not much room for anything without major reworking.
3: Mitchell Shire Council back in ~2020/2021 released their vision of the future Wallan station, which had a large number of sidings off the down (Seymour) end, West of the mainlines, ending near the BP for Southbound cars on the Hume; any siding capacity lost at Upfield would most likely be redistributed to there.
4: Campbellfield station will be problematic to reinstate, as standards now require new stations to have (almost) flat platforms, and there's nowhere near the site that's flat enough for a new platform to be built; easiest option would be to raise Camp Road enough that the transition for trains from downhill to uphill can have a platform length that's flat, but that may cause other issues.
I see everything being done before SRL North - I assume that the "Fawkner" SRL station would be located between the M80 and Camp Road (or Mahoneys Road).
In the shorter term, I could also see PTV starting with V/Line services only for a while.
Afaik the “Fawkner” station will be at gowrie owing to larger catchment. Definitely would be ideal to finish this before SRL north as you say
There is already a Fawkner station at the Cemetery, any Campbellfield station should be further north than Camp Rd as Camp Rd is too close to the existing Gowrie Station, perhaps put it near "the Meadows" Dog Track" ??
@@MetroManMelbournealso a SRL stop at Gowrie would connect the train with the 527 bus service which terminates/commences on the west side of Gowrie station
As the population grows the demand in the transport system or both road and rail.
Back then it used to be the BROADmeadows line and Somerton station existed, but since Melbourne’s POPULATION is growing we can’t keep up with that anymore 👍
Gyvus is a legend
would be good to connect the new underground parkville station direct with Jewell or Brunswick, this would have to cut a heap of time off the upfield trip
i notice at 1:18 and 4:50, gauntlet line.
Sick a MetroMan video
Why not extend the Mernda line ?
They can run additional trains but terminate some before upfield. Like at Coburg or Gowrie. I can’t imagine many using it north of Gowrie to Upfield
That's the plan for the short term when the Metro Tunnel opens I believe, but it's quite silly to terminate half the trains just one stop short of the end of the line, and I'd imagine quite inefficient too.
@@MetroManMelbourne true but there isn’t much development there yet. But this would only be a short term solution. If I was building this line, after Upfield I would send it to Broadmeadows, the Airport, than Albion then back down to Newport and Upgrade the Williamstown line
I would've thought it would make more sense to extend the Upfield line to Epping North & Wollert instead of creating a branch off the Mernda line at Lalor as it would serve areas that aren't already serviced by train and most likely involve less tunneling than a Lalor-Wollert route. Although redundancy would be a major plus of this project, it doesn't really seem to make a lot of sense to entirely rebuild a rail corridor just to create an alternative to the Essendon route. A duplication of the track to Upfield would make a lot of sense though, as well as maybe considering reinstating the existing single track (rather than a complete rebuild, duplication & electrification) to provide some redundancy and/or an alternative for VLine trains.
There’s no world in which that makes sense. Almost all of the future wollert branch has land put aside, you would need to build essentially 7-8km of tunnels to link wollert to upfield by comparison. The purpose of the upfield somerton link is not redundancy, it is to prevent craigieburn trains becoming overcrowded & to extend to wallan.
A cheaper, short term alternative for Wallan trains would be a 2 car sprinter or 3 car vlocity shuttling to Craigieburn, where a same platform interchange could take place, like what happens with the Stony Point line at Frankston currently. Metro trains are obviously needed in the medium and long term though
That's definitely something worth investigating for now, perhaps a 20 minute frequency sprinter service from Craigieburn to Wallan. The Government also just announced a new high-frequency direct Craigieburn to Donnybrook bus link which is a good start.
But passengers won't want to switch to a slower Metro service, they probably prefer their semi express V/Line.
@@shaunclarke94 The metro service would be faster when considering the massively improved frequency (probably 10 minutes) over V/Line (60-120 mins).
@@MetroManMelbourne true.
But that does nothing for relieving the Craigieburn corridor.
Still eagerly awaiting for the promised extension of the Glen Waverley line to Mulgrave, then on to Rowville and then finally terminating at Scoresby / Knox-field.... Still waiting since promised in 1969. Ha!
They need to be able to run both ways, Upfield to join the Craigieburn line and head back to the city or back out north at high capacity along with split vline services
i doubt it will be complete by the time for the metro tunnels opening mostly because the opening date is now possibly later this year however they could probably get around to approving it before the metro tunnel opens
Yep exactly as I said. Definitely will occur sooner rather than later though.
If it were to be an up up down down they could have cross platform transfers
So the issue here is the line and its potential extension mainly goes through light industrial . You even mentioned declining light industrial. Without a comprehensive commitment to brownfield redevelopment, their doesn’t seem much point in building a line where the density of commuters is low, those who do commute to work will probably prefer cars as they will likely live on parallel lines rather than on along the same line and the ridership is guaranteed to decrease.
If you watched the video you would know that the project is not about serving that industrial use in upfield - somerton section. It is about wallan.
It will be serving the Donnybrook to Wallan corridor which is projected to grow to the size of Canberra in the next 20 years time.
Our existing government (as at the start of 2024) isn't interested in the north or the west of Melbourne, especially as far as rail projects go. We have seen this with the lack of proper plans to electrify to Melton and Bacchus Marsh, the recent withdrawal of Bacchus Marsh H sets which could have been used to continue to provide increased capacity on the west, and no mention at all of doing anything more with the Upfield line towards Roxburgh Park, or continuing with the airport line to Tullamarine. Instead they continue to focus on the not-needed Cheltenham to Box Hill underground line, which many people in the area say isn't needed. This strikes me as a 21st Century version of the former Outer Circle Railway.
You're right and wrong. The SRL is still needed. But the Government has been incredibly lacklustre when it comes to electrifying to the west and north.
Yes of course the H sets should be withdrawn. The fact that they are still being used is a disgrace.
@@MetroManMelbourne The SRL is nowhere near as urgent as the Western Rail Plan or anything to relieve the Craigieburn corridor.
where do albury trains go?
standard gauge on the albion-jacana line.
where's that?@@MetroManMelbourne
Can we walk together
Comment for
Engagement
MetMaMes return soon?
no
@@MetroManMelbourne R.I.P MetMaMes (Jeff Kennett is poop)
Extend the wires to Seymour.
Have you ever been to Wallan? It's not that busy
It's not busy now sure, but even in 5 or 10 years it will be - how busy was Officer, Sunbury 10 years ago? The idea is to provide the service before/at the same time as new development, so that public transport use becomes entrenched
@@MetroManMelbourne no. It won't be. It's in one of the worst parts of the state. I know as my family is from there. It's economically depressed and has been for a long time
@@timallardyce1216 I'm sorry mate but you're just plain wrong.
In the 2016 census Donnybrook had a population of 169 people. There were now 5,210 there in 2023 (2982% increase). which is projected to increase to 48,123 in 2041.
In the 2016 census Wallan had a population of 11,074 people. There were around 19,726 in 2023 (78% increase), which is projected to increase to 50,614 by 2041.
In the 2016 census Beveridge had a population of 2,330 people. There are now around 9,118 people there (291% increase), which is projected to be 73,745 by 2041.
You get the point. It's a growing area.
You're correct in saying that it's economically depressed though, A rail extension could help alleviate part of that.
@@MetroManMelbourne pfft. No. It's the craphole of victoria
@MetroManMelbourne sorry. I do really like your channel & enjoyed the video & the new information you have about it. I'm just sceptical about that part of Victoria as it's where my family is from and it's been in a rut as long as I've known it.
IF it did happen though, the Seymour line would struggle to survive as it would lose half its stations and only be Kilmore East, Broadford (where my family it's mostly from), Tallarook and Seymour.
Campbellfield and Upfield are not low density residential, they’re medium denisty
They are not the lowest of densities by any means, but they are also not really medium density either.
@@MetroManMelbourne country towns don’t call anything under 3ksqm low density
I don't think they'd electrify it before the Melton line gets electrified.
You never know to be honest. If they did it all at once I’d imagine they’d save some money too.
bro rowan got violated💀
Bendigo, Ballarat, Geelong, traralgon and Seymour line should be electirifed
Perhaps in 20-30 years, the priority should be Melton/Wyndham Vale/Wallan right now
@@MetroManMelbourneIk just imagine a comeng at Malmsbury or Ballan
@@MetroManMelbourne Geelong definitely warrants electrification at current day. It's a shame that we're forced to think of rail projects as "one or the other" when there are so many projects that should've been built decades ago.
@@TeamEXAngus I’d like to agree with you but there is only a certain amount of money we can spend. We should get sparks to western Melbourne before we consider any further.
No wonder we have a bad rail system. If that is a priority heaven help us. I can think of several other projects that should be return or restored before this. The Cranbourne East/ Cardinia extension, electrification to Hastings, Whittlesea line to Whittlesea. Great video though and I did enjoy your commentary.
You had me until Hastings and Whittlesea… neither of those are extensions are needed lol. Thanks for the support!
Electrification to Hastings would cost a massive amount of money to service a small and static population, where as the line to Wallan would be much cheaper and service a massively growing population.
@@MetroManMelbourne the Whittlsea line will be extended a few kilometres at a time as the population grows northward, at the moment the population growth is at Mernda so once it heads further north they'll add a new station further up the old rail reservation. Maybe they should look at running Upfield between Craigieburn and the Epping/Mernda corridor to pick up that area while there is still land available to reserve for rail purposes ??
@@pvda64 The population won't grow beyond Mernda, that land is beyond the urban growth boundary, and there is quite a bit of land elsewhere to develop first.
There are concepts of a line from Epping to Wollert which could one day link through to Wallan.
@@jakal0i take it you have no idea of the development between Frankston and Hastings. No idea at all. Static? lol. Okay. Plus if you need electrocution to Wallan then you already have a perfectly good existing line that’s already closer to Wallan at Craigieburn. Yet you talk about ‘cheaper’ - when it’s also ‘cheaper’ just to carry on from Cragie (cutting out how many extra kms of not only electrification but remediation of track and grade
separation) instead on electrifying a link line that already has other lines near it. Hastings doesn’t so your getting more for your money.
🤤 'Promo sm'
From a logic point of view its plain silly to ever re-open this section.
Much more sensible to focus on the extension from Mernda to Whittlrsea, Re-open the linesto Healesville & Mornington.
I think you need to reconsider your view from a "logical point of view". There is no world in which it is more sensible to build a line to Whittlesea for 6000 people or Healesville for 10000 ahead of the Wallan corridor with 50,000 now and probably 400,000+ people in a few decades. Mornington sure.
@@MetroManMelbourne Wallan line already exists.
Build lines where there's people.
You go to Coldstream, Yarra Glen & Healesville and tell those people they don't deserve a train service.....go on see what kind of response you get
Same for Whittlesea & Mornington.
Yet Upfield has very few passengers and you're going on about some rail corridor that already exists.
Build lines where there currently are none, its called inclusion!
@@jacintaedwards1123 Ahahaha mate you're having a laugh. Coldstream's 4 farmers (5 on a good day) deserve a rail line over upgrading Upfield/Wallan with probably a catchment area of half a million people or more.
You're right about Mornington. They should reopen that.
But just because the rail corridor exists and the line existed once upon a time, doesn't mean it should reopen nowadays. Nobody serious in the transport field suggests that reopening the Healesville or Whittlesea lines is needed.
@@jacintaedwards1123 All of the above need a rail line. The enemy of rail projects is not other rail projects, it's road projects.
@@MetroManMelbourne Ask the people of those towns before passing judgment. If they demand a train service then they should have it.
This ignorant left wing bullshit attitude needs to be wiped out in Victoria.
There are people in Healesville who travel to work every weekday down to Lilydale or further into Melbourne.
Getting vehicles off roads should be the priority.
I say forget extending lines and stop pushing wildlife out of areas they live in
This is a terrible idea and I can't fathom why anyone would think otherwise. With a packed train departing upfield bound for the city, how do you propose passengers closer to the city actually get on the train? With homes for 150,000+ currently being built near the Upfield line, it just doesn't make any sense. There is already a line to craigiburn, that's seems to be doing just fine, no need to ruin the Upfield line any further than it's about to be anyway. It's more like 20 minutes, and that's just fine, what's the rush needing it any more frequently. What a waste of precious resources. Lucky we have proper planners in government who actually get all this stuff and will make the right decisions.
You mentioned the “proper planners” - they’re the ones who made this proposal…
@@MetroManMelbournein which frigging decade, and on whose bloody bank accounts “mate”! This is exactly why the entire rail system has been ratshit for the last twenty years! Once upon a time, you took a train to anywhere from Spencer Street - the socalled Southern Cross interchange, and this bullshit of dealing with separate transport departments in different states just to book a frigging train ticket didn’t happen either! Mind you, that was also before some flog thought I was my mother’s uncle’s brother, and that they could pretend I was dead too, so….
@@1ihws this decade and in Victorian government bank accounts 👍