Hey All

Does anyone know where abouts was the cement siding at Albion/Sunshine?

Thanks
Shelton.

http://www.victorianrailways.net/signaling/completedia/albsab79dia.html may help.

OK thanks! - that does help- looks like it was the Albion Reid siding the cement wagons were taken too - now part of Boral.

Cheers
Shelton.

http://www.victorianrailways.net/signaling/completedia/albsab79dia.html may help.

John Darling and sons is the silos, the ARC works is still operating on the north side of Ballarat Road.

With John Darling and Sons - were the GYs loaded there with grain from the silos or were the GYs unloaded their grain into the silos ?

Cheers!

I believe they used to push trains from this siding into the Albion quarry when it became a landfill.

You can see the remnants of track on Google earth

With John Darling and Sons - were the GYs loaded there with grain from the silos or were the GYs unloaded their grain into the silos ?

John Darling & Sons is (was?) a very large flour mill, so grain was delivered to the siding.

Old thread i know - however the question is - was flour railed out of this siding?  Looking at an old VR report (1956-1957) is says 48,000 Tons Inwards (out of this siding) and 34,000 Tons outwards
Source:
https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/papers/govpub/VPARL1956-58No33.pdf

Back in 1985 I was a signalman at sunshine signal box and the Tottenham Pilot would shunt at Sunshine then make its way into B siding which was just past the box on the left hand side on the Bendigo line .The Totty pilot usually a Y class  would run the full length of B siding to Albion . I cant say at that time if it took grain wagons to Albion but they would only of been G Y s .Cement was regularly hauled to the overhead cement discharge hopper at Albion Reid . ARC wire products received inward loading every couple of weeks ,easy to spot as you could look down out of the signal box at the loading  rolls and rolls of wire

Back in 1985 I was a signalman at sunshine signal box and the Tottenham Pilot would shunt at Sunshine then make its way into B siding which was just past the box on the left hand side on the Bendigo line .The Totty pilot usually a Y class  would run the full length of B siding to Albion . I cant say at that time if it took grain wagons to Albion but they would only of been G Y s .Cement was regularly hauled to the overhead cement discharge hopper at Albion Reid . ARC wire products received inward loading every couple of weeks ,easy to spot as you could look down out of the signal box at the loading  rolls and rolls of wire

Wow - thank you David!  Love to hear more stories about Sunshine from the signal mans viewpoint as I grew up in Sunshine but was too young to see any of these shunts as I was in primary school.
Yes I have seen photos of the cement wagon coming back to totty yard.

Here is a photo from Weston Langford with a small rake of GYs coming back from John Darling and Sons siding:

https://www.westonlangford.com/media/photos/116214.jpg

Regards
Shelton

With John Darling and Sons - were the GYs loaded there with grain from the silos or were the GYs unloaded their grain into the silos ?

John Darling & Sons is (was?) a very large flour mill, so grain was delivered to the siding.

John Darling has not been operational for many years .

Yes, but back in the day, I think some flour must have been railed out of there.  According to the VR 1975 Yearly Report, it says 48,000 Tons Inwards (out of this siding) and 34,000 Tons outwards.  What made up these outwards/inwards tons?

Just to continue on seeing that Mr Shazam75 has a "passion for the pilot" When I was based at sunshine signal box,the Tottenham Pilot would run directly from the Gravitation Lines ,across the suburban lines, and run directly into B siding .                                              

Prior to all this happening, Tottenham B signalbox would use the description bells to signal what type of train was leaving and  approaching the signal box in advance . I cant remember the actual code as my note book isn't here but say it was 2 long 2 short  and sunshine would repeat that back to prove the signal was understood .

There were various siding  that were to be shunted so the loading was placed in order at the tottenham yard. .the consist would divide and the portion for the Albion sidings would go forward with the loco leaving the other  rubbish  to be shunted later. B siding parallels the Bendigo line to  Albion station . Look through my notes loaded G Y  wagons were going in .
Sometimes the pilot would just run in to B siding with GY or GH wagons proving that John Darling & Sons ,flour mill was operation with grain being  delivered to the siding.Cement was also hauled to the discharge hopper at Albion Reid as well as wire products received  to the ARC wire works.                       When all the shunting was complete in B siding the shunter who hand ridden on the pilot (usually 2 or 3 of them) would phone from the disc signal  and ask too go to shunt to Massey Ferrguson Tractors Siding (MF).
This my take a little longer as I would have to phone Standard gauge (SG) train controller and if the line was clear ,SG train controller would electrically release lever number 7 which was a crosslock or half white ,half black which would enable you to operate  the grade crossing across the standard gauge track.

.When finished the shunt at MF it was the pilot would pull out 3,4,or 5 flat or open wagons with shinny red MF tractors ready for sale. Push the rake back to B siding ,couple up to the rest of the rubbish ,put the air through .                                                                     then pull up to the disc and whistle when they where ready to depart back to totty yard


There are no train to base radios or driver to guard or shunter radios. There was a M O (a Modes Operante) for all tasks and signal men new the procedures that were to happen at their location.Drivers knew a certain amount of procedures at each location  but they deal with the whole rail system where  about I had to made sure that the traffic was dealt with in accordance with the rules and regulationsat this location where it was Victorias worst rail calamity  that occurred in 1908 claiming 44 lives

Wow- thank you David - I grew up in Sunshine and would do a lot of train spotting when I was a kid in the 1980s.
I do remember a couple of HD or similar vans that were abondoned near the Goods Shed opposite sunshine station.

Yes certainly GY/GHs would be going into the John Darling and Sons loaded with grain, however I assume they would then be brought back to totty yard empty?

Also, do you remember the Grain Elevators Board on the Brooklyn line?  I assume they were discharging/offloading grain into those huge silos?

Regards
Shelton

My time on VR finished a few years before David is referring to but, yes, the GEB sidings were well used during the early 1980s.
In May 1979 I spent a week relieving at Tottenham yard, replacing one of the local Loco assistants. Tottenham had at least half a dozen crews out-stationed at Tottenham at with the same Y class allocated to them for at least a week. One crew worked the 'top yard' with most of the rest running jobs similar to B7; i.e. taking rakes to Brooklyn or Sunshine for shunting the many industrial sidings at those locations. One crew may have worked the 'bottom yard' but I'm not 100% sure of that anymore. The locos were exchanged when they needed servicing or re-fueling. Technically the crews were based at Sth Dynon but there was not a lot of movement back to the main depot that I'm aware of, driver wise. The loco assistants had to when they came due to do their driving exam.
The pilot I worked was known as B7 and, in my week, we had the same loco, being Y109. We started at 6:35am and took a rake down to Sunshine where we shunted B siding but being that long ago I can't tell you exactly what was shunted or where. B siding was like a mini main line, it ran so far, as David says, between Sunshine and Albion.
The shunters had to careful if working on the up side, adjacent to the suburban lines, especially, as David says, there were no radios in use at that time. Communication between shunters and loco was by yelling or hand signals and telephone with the signalman, when required. There was generally a reasonable amount of room between the lines but there were spots where they came close together, especially if they had to go further out for sighting purposes then they risked getting too close to the passing main line traffic.
Running to and fro from Tottenham with a shunting crew was always entertaining. They took whatever space was available that didn't block the loco crews view, often clustered together on the long end platform when running long end leading, or all over the shunters steps with a few on the short end platform, out of our direct line of sight, when running short end leading. The head shunter generally came into the cab, partially to fill us in on what we had to do but also to get out of the wind and, in winter, for warmth; because almost to a man they all wore shorts and shirt all year round. A jumper may have been worn at night or during the cooler months but long pants were a rarity.
To my disappointment, I never crossed 'the gauge' to shunt MF. To be honest, at the time, I thought that MF had given up using rail but David's info trumps me and corrects my thoughts on their use of rail.

Neil

Thanks Niel!

So coming from Totty yard into B Siding, I presume before crossing Anderson Rd, the engine would come off and run round to be at the front of the rake then the Y Class would push the rake back into the Darliing and Sons siding?

1. What if there were empties to be collected to return them to Totty yard or as mentioned, the ARC siding also had to be shunted?
2 .With ARC siding, was the pilot waiting for the cement hopper to be emptied out or was it left there to be picked up the next day?

Thanks and Regards
Shelton

Thanks Niel!

So coming from Totty yard into B Siding, I presume before crossing Anderson Rd, the engine would come off and run round to be at the front of the rake then the Y Class would push the rake back into the Darliing and Sons siding?

1. What if there were empties to be collected to return them to Totty yard or as mentioned, the ARC siding also had to be shunted?
2 .With ARC siding, was the pilot waiting for the cement hopper to be emptied out or was it left there to be picked up the next day?

Thanks and Regards
Shelton

Okay, I'll try again as RP lost my first response.
Wagons were left for 24 hours for loading or unloading. The pilots (shunting locos) didn't wait around for that to happen, the following days pilot would collect it.
Off the top of my head I would have said there was a run around loop at the Albion end of B siding but two, 2010, VLine signal diagrams corrected my memory. There was a run around of 345m at the up (Sunshine) end of B siding. The GF siding also had two locations that wagons could be run around, if necessary.
So the pilot would arrive in B siding and leave the newly arrived rake in the run around, go and shunt the sidings as necessary and haul out-bound wagons to the empty run around road. The loco would then drop onto the newly arrived rake and push them to where they were wanted, return to the out-bound loading and couple to the leading end to haul them back to Tottenham. I don't remember the ARC siding but if it was a trailing point from the up end then the loco would have pulled the loading out and then pushed it to the runaround road for outbound traffic. Pushing on a siding was okay as long as you only had wagons attached to one end of the loco, never both ends at the same time; it restricted the crews vision too much. On a main line it was not permitted under ordinary circumstances, so pushing through Sunshine station and back to Tottenham was a no-no.
Anderson St did add a complication as a shunter would have to unlock the manual control box and we had to wait for the booms to be fully lowered before we could cross the road. If main line traffic lowered the booms then we benefited but our desire to cross didn't always coincide with those events and road traffic hated our going back and forth due to the time of day we were there (morning peak).
Tottenham yard was a whole lot busier then, apart from having locally based crews running the pilots, every up goods from Ballarat (via "the Marsh"), Bendigo and Seymour (via the Albion loop line) ran on the Independent goods lines to drop loading that Tottenham dealt with. This included loading for sidings as far away as Paisley, Spotswood & the munitions factory in Deer Park, as well as the obvious ones of Sunshine and Brooklyn. Less obvious was Geelong loading off the Bendigo or Seymour lines, to save it from the round trip of going into Melbourne yard and back out to Tottenham again. Even some livestock traffic for Newmarket was left there on occasions, although this was not that common as most Newmarket livestock traffic was collected by one of the Newmarket pilots from the tail end of a newly arrived goods in the Melbourne (hump yard) arrivals yard.
If anyone is interested in the signal diagrams, they are in pdf format and I could get them to you via Dropbox, email or your, other, preferred method, if you have one. Notably the MF and ARC sidings are long gone by 2010 so they don't appear on the diagrams, but GF does (Sunshine to Albion) as do the GEB sidings (Sunshine). I copied these from the now defunct signals and diagrams website via Wayback Machine before the whole lot, unfortunately, vanished completely.

Neil

Hi Niel
I really enjoy reading about the working around the Sunshine area.  I grew up there but missed seeing the Pilots working the Albion sidings as I was too young and at primary school.

Also very interesting to read about the trains coming into totty then some wagons being marshalled out to the various industries.  Do you know where the Cement wagons came from for the Boral siding.  Did these come from Geelong?

The GEB siding - was this also part of the pilots duties?

Yes, I will be interested in the signals diagram.  If you can make them available that will be good.

Thanks
Shelton

One other point, the afternoon pilot from Tottenham would bring loaded briquettes for the siding behind the platform at Sunshine. The empties from here would then be shunted over to the harvester sidings.  This tended to happen as the afternoon peak started and would keep the signalman busy getting these shunts done while dealing with the busy traffic. Prior to the Tottenham - Brooklyn direct link all South Western goods would run down to "B" siding and the engines run around before heading to Brooklyn. It was not uncommon to have 3 or 4 goods queued on the down Tottenham goods waiting for an opportunity to get through the platforms at Sunshine. Just to keep the signalman busy, at the end of the peak a parcel coach would arrive run through the down platform and set back into the up for loading. Loading was often so heavy the coach would be shunted back onto the down main to let an up through and then resume loading at the up platform. None of the siding roads, except those used to store sparks overnight beside the western main line were wired, so the coach had to remain on the main lines somewhere at all times.

Bill Johnston

Wow - thanks Bill for the further insights!  Never knew about the link between Totty and Brooklyn didn't exist and that all trains would have to queue up on the DOWN goods Line and run-around on the B Siding if they wanted to head to Geelong.  Also very interesting about the briquettes loads - were these loaded wagons for the Massey Ferguson plant?

Regards
Shelton

The briquettes were for the fuel siding at Sunshine which was a siding behind or west of the back platform road. The empty GY's were then moved over to the harvester siding to be loaded with harvester machinery. You could place quite a large tractor in a GY with the wheels removed and stay in the loading gauge.
Just to clarify, what may have been misleading,  the late afternoon and evening goods trains out of Tottenham were not all for the South West, most North East, Western and Northern freights came this way as well, hence the queue. I have seen the first of the south west freights arrive while the pilot was still shunting and you would end up with the pilot in one of the "B" siding roads waiting for a chance to get back to Tottenham, a south west goods in the other road with its engines sitting behind the pilot and its load. Once the pilot left and the other engines completed their run around, a further south west train would arrive in to the vacant road and its engines left sitting behind the first train to the south west while it waits its turn to head to Brooklyn.  For those who may not realise, getting a train from "B" siding to Brooklyn required a release from the signal box and a porter to operate an auxiliary frame at the up end of the island platform further complicating the process. As indicated earlier all this without radios.
I can just imagine the signalman at Sunshine seeing a chance to get a train out of "B" siding for Brooklyn and then not being able to raise the porter for the auxiliary frame.

Bill Johnston.

Hi Niel
I really enjoy reading about the working around the Sunshine area.  I grew up there but missed seeing the Pilots working the Albion sidings as I was too young and at primary school.

Also very interesting to read about the trains coming into totty then some wagons being marshalled out to the various industries.  Do you know where the Cement wagons came from for the Boral siding.  Did these come from Geelong?

The GEB siding - was this also part of the pilots duties?

Yes, I will be interested in the signals diagram.  If you can make them available that will be good.

Thanks
Shelton

This is one I'm not definite about, so if Bill, David or others know for certain then they can correct me, but I reckon the GEB sidings would have been shunted by pilots when loading was light. However, if the loading was sufficient enough then I think that a whole train would have been run into the sidings, as happens with the SSR loading for the Kensington mill. I have a vague feeling that I worked the GEB siding at some point, on a pilot, but I'll have to dig to see if I noted that down, before I can say that for certain.
In VR days locos were not stabled in sidings but returned to a depot for fueling, servicing if necessary, and then sent off to haul another load. The VR didn't have that many spare to leave some stabled somewhere waiting for a train to be emptied!
I would agree that the cement came from Geelong, but, again, cannot be 100% sure on that. Geelong sent a lot of trains towards Melbourne with cement including block trains to Arden St (that'd be useful right now with the Metro tunnel being on the same site as those sidings used to be) and Lyndhurst, as well as smaller loads to other locations which most likely included Boral.
Since Dynon had a huge number of crews, and Geelong also had a large number, the number of trains that were run by others meant you weren't able to see the whole picture of what came from where to go to somewhere else. We were 'too close to the ground' in the locos. Someone in head office in the traffic department would have been able to see the whole picture.

Neil

Thanks Bill and Neil.

I had the chance to visit Sunshine Signal Box a few years ago - I took this video from the box - we can see Siding B next to the main Down Line.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiKY5RkUp4M

I didnt even know there was a fuel siding at Sunshine!   Was this fuel siding being used in the 1960s or 1970s?  I take it this briquette was for a local customer at Sunshine?  

I know the Goods Shed was moved at one point.  



Regards
Shelton

Geez, that scene has changed just a bit in the last 8 or so years! Apart from the rolling stock of course

Geez, that scene has changed just a bit in the last 8 or so years!

Yeah, the N set is pretty much the only thing that hasn’t been demolished/replaced/made redundant in that video! Level crossing, sidings, footbridge, signals, signal box, junction...