The St Kilda-Windsor railway line was a short-lived section of railway that linked the isolated

Windsor Windsor may refer to: Places Australia * Windsor, New South Wales ** Municipality of Windsor, a former local government area * Windsor, Queensland, a suburb of Brisbane, Queensland **Shire of Windsor, a former local government authority around Wi ...

Brighton Brighton () is a seaside resort and one of the two main areas of the City of Brighton and Hove in the county of East Sussex, England. It is located south of London. Archaeological evidence of settlement in the area dates back to the Bronze A ...

(Bay Street) section of the

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...

railway network to the city. The branch line fell into disuse when an alternative route was built between

and

Richmond Richmond most often refers to: * Richmond, Virginia, the capital of Virginia, United States * Richmond, London, a part of London * Richmond, North Yorkshire, a town in England * Richmond, British Columbia, a city in Canada * Richmond, California, ...

stations.

Purpose

Windsor station, originally called "Chapel Street Station", was the terminus for northbound trains on the Brighton Beach line. It was run by the

St Kilda and Brighton Railway Company The St Kilda and Brighton Railway Company was a railway company in Victoria, Australia. The company opened a line from St Kilda Railway Station (via an elevated loop) in Melbourne, Australia to Bay Street (now North Brighton) in 1859 and Beach ...

, which built the loop line connecting the isolated Brighton line to the St Kilda line, so that the former could be connected to the city. Trains from the city travelled south to St Kilda terminus, and then "backed out" on to the loop line to Windsor. The loop was carried on wooden trestles across a swamp now known as the

Albert Park Lake Albert Park is a large public park in the City of Port Phillip, an inner suburban LGA of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Located south of the Melbourne central business district, the park encompasses of parkland around the long Albert Park ...

, and had a raised

embankment Embankment may refer to: Geology and geography * A levee, an artificial bank raised above the immediately surrounding land to redirect or prevent flooding by a river, lake or sea * Embankment (earthworks), a raised bank to carry a road, railwa ...

with a bridge over

St Kilda Road St Kilda Road is a street in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It is part of the locality of Melbourne which has the postcode of 3004, and along with Swanston Street forms a major spine of the city. St Kilda Road begins at Flinders Street, in ...

. A possible reason for the construction of the loop line connecting through to St Kilda was the difficulty experienced by contractors in constructing a rail crossing -over the

Yarra River The Yarra River or historically, the Yarra Yarra River, (Kulin languages: ''Berrern'', ''Birr-arrung'', ''Bay-ray-rung'', ''Birarang'', ''Birrarung'', and ''Wongete'') is a perennial river in south-central Victoria, Australia. The lower stre ...

at Cremorne, known in the mid-19th century as "Forrest Hill". In the mid-19th century the railway bisected a swamp. Cooper (1924; p. 181) reports that when the rail embankment was first being constructed it subsided, burying ballast trucks in the swamp. The cost of recovering the trucks was deemed to be uneconomic, so a second embankment was constructed over them.

Operation

The first train on the loop line from St Kilda was on 3 December 1859, and it opened to the public ten days later. There were no trains after 7 pm on the branch line; patrons simply walked to their homes in Prahran from St Kilda station in Fitzroy Street. A short time after the loop line was constructed, a competing connection was built between Windsor and Richmond stations, with the first train arriving at Windsor directly from Melbourne on 24 November 1860. The loop line to St Kilda then fell into disuse, and track duplication, a condition of the original Crown lease, was never completed.

Demise

The St Kilda and Brighton Railway Company experienced financial difficulties, no doubt exacerbated by the direct link to Melbourne through Prahran and Windsor, and was bought by the

Melbourne and Suburban Railway Company The Melbourne and Suburban Railway Company was a railway company in Victoria, Australia. The company opened a line from Princes Bridge railway station in Melbourne, Australia to Punt Road (Richmond) and over the Yarra River to South Yarra (then c ...

in 1862. The track, bridge and trestles between St Kilda Station and Punt Road were dismantled, probably less than five years after original construction. However, a siding from Windsor station to Hoddle Street remained. Due to the track alignments there were now two level crossings within on Union Street, because the siding continued to be used for shunting trains from the Brighton line, and to carry screenings from the Richmond quarries to a commercial depot on Punt Road (then known as Hoddle Street). Perversely, it was due to local annoyance at the

level crossing A level crossing is an intersection where a railway line crosses a road, Trail, path, or (in rare situations) airport runway, at the same level, as opposed to the railway line crossing over or under using an Overpass#Railway, overpass ...

on the siding near the station that trains won the legal

right-of-way Right of way is the legal right, established by grant from a landowner or long usage (i.e. by prescription), to pass along a specific route through property belonging to another. A similar ''right of access'' also exists on land held by a gov ...

at road-rail intersections in Victoria. Indignant at the delays to

horse-drawn A horse-drawn vehicle is a mechanized piece of equipment pulled by one horse or by a team of horses. These vehicles typically had two or four wheels and were used to carry passengers and/or a load. They were once common worldwide, but they have m ...

traffic caused by trains, and in particular the perpetually closed and unmanned crossing of the siding, local councillors from

Prahran Prahran (), also pronounced colloquially as Pran, is an inner suburb in Melbourne, Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia, 5 km south-east of Melbourne's Melbourne central business district, Central Business District, located within the City ...

, along with a gang of men, a solicitor and some police, marched to the level crossing in question one morning in 1869 and began to rip up the tracks on the siding. The matter was brought to court on 17 April 1869 and, although the railways won the

case, the siding was not reconstructed. No evidence remains of the embankments or the bridge over St Kilda Road, although the alignment of the loop can be traced by residual parkland and some oddly-shaped property boundaries. A small park to the west of Windsor station is called "Windsor Siding".

Purpose

Operation

Demise

References

Further reading