page_title: Gippsland railway line
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Gippsland railway line / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Coal train passing through Moe Station, ~1920
context_page_description: The Gippsland line is a railway line serving the Latrobe Valley and Gippsland regions of Victoria, Australia. It runs east from the state capital Melbourne through the cities of Moe, Morwell, Traralgon, Sale and terminating at Bairnsdale.
  Prior to its dismantlement in 1994, the line extended to Orbost. The dismantled section now comprises the East Gippsland Rail Trail, a shared bicycle, walking, and horseriding track.
context_section_description: Rail lines were built to Gippsland in the 1870s and initially played a crucial role in developing agricultural industries in Gippsland as well as tourism. It also played a crucial role in the development of coal mining in the Latrobe Valley in the 1920s. At its peak, the railway travelled as far east as Orbost, and there are still frequent services to many of the towns. Some of the disused rail lines have been turned into tourist railways and/or rail trails.
  The Melbourne and Suburban Railway Company opened a line from Princes Bridge railway station to Punt Road (Richmond) and South Yarra in 1859, Prahran in 1859 and Windsor in 1860, connecting with the St Kilda and Brighton Railway Company line. This line was extended to Dandenong, Pakenham, Warragul, Moe, Morwell, Traralgon, Sale, Stratford and Bairnsdale between 1877 and 1879. It was extended to Orbost in 1916.
  The railway to Orbost opened in 1916 and operated until 1987, principally carrying timber and farming produce. In the early days of the railway's operation, dedicated passenger trains ran, but these ceased by the 1930s. The track infrastructure was dismantled in 1994. The line traversed a mixture of farmland, hills and heavily-forested country. It included numerous bridges, including the Stoney Creek Trestle Bridge, the largest of its kind in Victoria.
  In 1954, the line beyond Dandenong was electrified, mainly because of the expected briquette traffic from the brown coal mines in the Latrobe Valley, and over the next two years most of the line between Dandenong and Pakenham was duplicated and provided with power signalling, although Narre Warren to Berwick was not done until 1962. In due course, the rail transport of briquettes petered out as industry converted to natural gas and homes were converted to other forms of heating.
  Electrification was cut back to Warragul in 1987, with suburban-style trains providing the services from there to Melbourne. Electrification was further cut back to Bunyip in 1998, before ceasing entirely beyond Pakenham in 2001. The line east of Sale was closed in 1994, but was reopened to Bairnsdale in 2004. In 2005, the Regional Fast Rail project upgraded one of the two lines between Pakenham and Traralgon. This project also included removing the remaining electrification infrastructure from Pakenham East to Traralgon, with the exception of a heritage-listed length in Bunyip.
caption: Coal train passing through Moe Station, ~1920
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