Rail Geelong

In case you haven't noticed, over the past few months I have been uploading a large number of photos related various rail projects going on along the Geelong line. These include:

• Regional Rail Link works between Southern Cross in Melbourne and the junction with the Geelong line at West Werribee Junction.
• Duplication of the standard gauge between North Geelong and Gheringhap.
• New signalling on the standard gauge at Manor Loop, Laverton Loop and the CRT Siding.
• Construction of the rail served Sadleirs Logistics warehouse at Spotwsood
• New stabling sidings at Newport Workshops.
• Grade separation at Kororoit Creek Road, Altona.
• Grade separation at Anglesea Road, Grovedale.

The Regional Rail Link works will be going for the new few years, the rest of the projects are either complete, or almost done.

In late February 2011 V/Line shutdown the Geelong line between Geelong and Warrnambool to enable some major trackworks to be carried out. Works included:

• 1 in 2 resleepering of the mainline between Geelong and the down side of Marshall with low-profile "partial replacement" concrete sleepers.
• Relaying the McKilliop Street level crossing
• Replacing the original 1912-era bridge span over Moorabool Street
• Pit replacement at South Geelong station, replacing the track of number 1 road with concrete sleepers
• Disconnecting the loop siding at Geelong Racecourse from the main line
• Replacing the walkways of the Waurn Ponds Creek bridge
• Building a new 7-span culvert underneath the railway embankment at Woolscour Lane
• Pit replacement at Marshall station, replacing the track of number 1 road with concrete sleepers

Photos of the work done can be found in the Gallery - here.

I have now created a RSS feed of recent changes to the site - it is available right here, the computer gurus among you can subscribe to it, and be informed when changes are made. I have also made available feeds for the image gallery:

• Recently uploaded images
• Albums with added images

After another round of issues with the site that I found over the weekend, I have now got it back online. This time I have updated the code to the latest version, instead of just restoring from clean backups.

I noticed this evening that some Malware had been inserted into my site's code, which then attempted to exploit holes in visitors web browsers to install nasties onto their computers. I took the site offline for a few hours to restore from backups, and now it is all clean again. Firefox or Google may still flag the site as a 'suspected attack site' but the issue has been fixed.

I think this is the first round of updates I have done to the site since April 2008 (about 18 months ago!) Changes include:

• New page listing all updates by when they were made
• Lineguides sorted by region
• The Geelong line now covers all station between Geelong and Warrnambool, including all closed stations along the way.
• The Maribyrnong River and Power Station and Oil Lines are now covered in much greater detail.
• The Mortlake branch is also covered.

The Geelong-Ballarat line is very close to being complete.

On February 22, 2009 Winchelsea was decommissioned as a block point, the crossing loop having been removed some months earlier. The up and down semaphore home signals were removed, and the up and down departure colour light signals were converted to LED automatic signals. Photos of the work are here.

I have done some more site tweaks, the last round I did messed things up to some degree. I think this round has not. A number of locations have been expanded as well.

I have just updated and tweaked the gallery software. The main difference is that it handles relocated images better, rather than just giving you an error it redirects you.

The Corio Independent Goods Line is pretty much completed, so a page about the layout and signalling has been created: http://www.railgeelong.com/lineguide/corio-independent-goods-line It accompanies the photos here: http://www.railgeelong.com/gallery/events/corio-independent-goods-line