The Maldon-Castlemaine Railway.

The Maldon-Castlemaine Railway was built by the Victorian Railways and commissioned in 1884, to connect the gold mining towns of Castlemaine and Maldon, in Victoria's central highlands. This part of Victoria owes much of it's past growth to gold, but it's main industries today are tourism and farming.

Castlemaine is located on the mainline between Melbourne and Bendigo, and is also the junction for the line from Castlemaine to Maryborough. Not far out of Maldon, there was also a branch to Shelbourne. The interesting thing about this branch to Shelbourne was that a train travelling from Castlemaine had to go into Maldon, then the loco had to run around the train, and head back towards Castlemaine before it could travel to Shelbourne. While this would make operation of a model railway of Maldon interesting, it must had been a headache at times for the railways, especially if Maldon station was having very busy day (I don't know how often that happened!). There was apparently even talk around the time the branch to Shelbourne was constructed of extending the line from Shelbourne up to the Dunolly - Bridgewater line, giving an alternative route for trains from Melbourne to the north west areas of the state. But having to run around a train at Maldon to go to Shelbourne would have limited the amount of traffic the line could effectively carry, because of the capacity of the Maldon yard.

The volunteer society that runs the railway today took possession of the line's facilities in 1976. The Maldon station is classified by the Nationsl Trust.

The rollingstock used by the railway includes steam locos K160, and J549, and F class deisel shunter, a collection of vintage carriages dating back to between 1909 and 1921, as well as some freight vehicles (I noticed a few 4 wheel G wagons sittings in a siding when I travelled on the railway. K160 was built in the 1940's, and was purchased by the railway in the 1970's. J549 was the last steam engine to be used in regular service by the Victorian Railways.

These photos were taken in September and October 2004. The railway has been rebuilt right back to Castlemaine, but as yet there are no scheduled passenger trains running all the way to Castlemaine. Apparently this was imminent in October 2004, but was being held up by the operator of the other railway lines around Castlemaine.