page_title: History of rail transport in Australia
section_title: Victoria
hierarchical_section_title: History of rail transport in Australia / Development of state-based networks / Victoria
caption_attribution_description: English: Spirit of Progress headed by S301 Sir Thomas Mitchell near Kilmore, c1938.
context_page_description: Australians generally assumed in the 1850s that railways would be built by the private sector. Private companies built railways in the then colonies of Victoria, opened in 1854, and New South Wales, where the company was taken over by the government before completion in 1855, due to bankruptcy. South Australia's railways were government owned from the beginning, including a horse-drawn line opened in 1854 and a steam-powered line opened in 1856. In Victoria, the private railways were soon found not to be financially viable, and existing rail networks and their expansion was taken over by the colony. Government ownership also enabled railways to be built to promote development, even if not apparently viable in strictly financial terms. The railway systems spread from the colonial capitals, except in cases where geography dictated a choice of an alternate port.
  Railways in Australia date from the 10 December 1831 when the Australian Agricultural Company officially opened Australia's first railway, located at the intersection of Brown and Church Streets, Newcastle, New South Wales.
context_section_description: Victoria's first railway was a suburban railway opened from Melbourne to Port Melbourne in 1854.  The Melbourne and Suburban Railway Company's line from Princes Bridge to Punt Road (Richmond) opened in 1859.  In the same year the  Geelong and Melbourne Railway Company opened its line from Melbourne to Geelong.  Subsequently the Victorian Railways built new railways to connect farming and mining communities to the ports of Melbourne, Geelong and Portland.  In 1862 lines reached the great gold rush towns of Bendigo and Ballarat. In 1864 a line was opened to the Murray River port of Echuca.  In 1883 the first connection with another State's rail system was made when the North East line was completed to the New South Wales Government Railways station at Albury, requiring a break-of-gauge to New South Wales' 4 ft 8 ¹⁄₂ in (1,435 mm) standard gauge Main Southern line.  In 1887, Victorian Railways met South Australian Railways at Serviceton, although both systems used broad gauge.
  In 1919, electrification and development of the Melbourne suburban lines commenced. Minor extensions to suburban lines have continued, but patronage fell as road transport gained favour from the 1960s. In recent years, patronage has risen substantially, with more than 200 million trips on the network in 2007–2008.  In 1981, Melbourne's only underground railway, the City Loop was opened.  On the country network, a large number of uneconomic branch line railways have been closed since the 1950s, leaving a skeleton network by the time of the Lonie Report of 1980. Privatisation of the Victorian railway network was carried out by the Kennett Government in the 1990s, with freight, suburban and country rail services split into separate companies. This was later followed by the Regional Fast Rail project that saw track upgrades, new trains, and an improved timetable to major regional cities.
caption: Premier express train of the Victorian Railways, the Spirit of Progress in 1937
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