Windsor railway station, Melbourne

Windsor railway station is located on the Sandringham line in Victoria, Australia, serving the south-eastern Melbourne suburb of Windsor. The station opened on 19 December 1859 as Chapel Street, and was renamed Windsor on 1 January 1867.[2] It is listed on the Victorian Heritage Register.[3]

Windsor
LocationChapel Street, Windsor
Coordinates37°51′22″S 144°59′31″E
Owned byVicTrack
Operated byMetro Trains
Line(s)Sandringham
Distance7.49 kilometres from Southern Cross
Platforms2 side
Tracks2
ConnectionsTram
Construction
Structure typeGround
Other information
StatusHost station
Station codeWIN
Fare zoneMyki zone 1
WebsitePublic Transport Victoria
History
Opened19 December 1859
ElectrifiedYes
Traffic
Passengers (2008-2009)0.966 million[1]
Passengers (2009-2010)1.025 million[1]  6.11%
Passengers (2010-2011)1.067 million[1]  4.1%
Passengers (2011-2012)1.067 million[1]  0%
Passengers (2012-2013)Not measured[1]
Passengers (2013-2014)1.054 million[1]  1.22%
Services
Preceding station   Metro Trains   Following station
Prahran
Sandringham line
towards Sandringham

Platforms & services

Windsor Station has two side platforms. It is served by Metro Trains Sandringham line trains travelling between Flinders Street and Sandringham.[4] Platform 1:

Platform 2:

Yarra Trams operate three routes via Windsor station:

The station was the terminus for trains on the Brighton Beach line, which was built in 1859 and operated by the St Kilda and Brighton Railway Company. The Company also built the loop branch line connecting the Brighton line to the Melbourne to St Kilda line, which was opened in 1857.

Trains from Melbourne travelled to the St Kilda terminus, and then "backed out" onto the loop line to Windsor. The loop was constructed on wooden trestles across the swampy ground now known as the Albert Park Lake, and included a raised embankment with a bridge[8] over St Kilda Road. The first train on the loop ran on 3 December 1859, and the line opened to the public ten days later. There were no trains after 7pm on the branch line; patrons had to walk to their homes in Prahran from St Kilda station in Fitzroy Street.

A short time after the loop line was constructed, a direct connection was built between South Yarra and Windsor stations, the first train arriving at Windsor directly from Melbourne on 24 November 1860. The loop line to St Kilda soon fell into disuse, and track duplication, a condition of the original crown lease, was never completed.

Preceding station   Disused railways   Following station
St Kilda   St Kilda - Windsor railway line   Junction
  List of closed railway stations in Melbourne  

Sidings

The St Kilda and Brighton Railway Company experienced financial difficulties and was bought by the Melbourne and Suburban Railway Company in 1862. The track, bridge and trestles between St Kilda station and Punt Road were dismantled; however, a siding from Windsor to Hoddle Street remained. Due to the track alignments there were now two level crossings within 100 metres on Union Street, as the siding continued to be used for shunting trains from the Brighton line, and to carry screenings from the Richmond quarries to a commercial depot on Punt Road (then known as Hoddle Street).

Perversely, it was due to local annoyance at the siding level crossing near the station, that trains won the legal right-of-way at road-rail intersections in Victoria. Indignant at the delays to horse-drawn traffic caused by trains, and in particular the perpetually closed and unmanned crossing of the siding, one morning in 1869, local councillors from Prahran marched to the level crossing in question with a group of workers who then began to rip up the tracks on the siding. The matter was later brought to court on 17 April 1869, although the railways won the right-of-way case, the siding was not reconstructed.

No evidence of the bridge over St Kilda Road or embankments remain, although the alignment of the loop can be traced by the residual parkland and some oddly-shaped property boundaries. A small park to the west of Windsor station is called "Windsor Siding".

1887 accident

On the evening of 11 May 1887, an express train crashed into the rear of a stopping train between Prahran and Windsor stations. Four people were killed and over 100 severely injured. The stopping train had been halted short of Windsor station by a signal. When the signal to proceed was given, the driver could not release the brakes on his train due to a ruptured air pipe. An express train from Melbourne was scheduled 10 minutes behind the stopping train and, due to a curve in the track and a deep cutting, the crew of the express could not see the stationary train ahead. Cooper (1924) reported that the noise of the impact could be heard throughout Prahran and that, in a short time, over 10,000 people were gathered at the site.[9] The driver of the Brighton express, Frederick William Maskell, was killed, along with his fireman, James Houston McNab, William Runting, aged 21, and Annie Foster, aged 45, of Colac. Only weeks earlier, Maskell had received a special reward of £5 from the Railways Commissioners for his alertness in averting an accident after another driver had disregarded a signal.[10]

  • Windsor Siding reserve in June 2008
gollark: Hmm, yes, this is not very high-quality.
gollark: With modern video codecs you can actually fit Shrek (the movie) into 8MiB in sort-of-viewable quality.
gollark: Yes, GIF bad.
gollark: And says it does more colors per frame, somehow?
gollark: Yes, but that encoder thing apparently does unfathomable dark magic to make it look fairly good.

References
  1. "Train Station Patronage FY2008-2014" (XLS). Public Transport Victoria. 14 May 2015. Archived from the original on 30 March 2016. Retrieved 1 November 2016. (access from )
  2. Windsor Vicsig
  3. Windsor Railway Station Complex Department of Transport, Planning & Local Infrastructure
  4. "Sandringham Line". Public Transport Victoria.
  5. "5 Melbourne University - Malvern". Public Transport Victoria.
  6. "64 Melbourne University - East Brighton". Public Transport Victoria.
  7. "78 North Richmond - Balaclava via Prahran". Public Transport Victoria.
  8. http://www.stonnington.vic.gov.au/library/praimage/09/9303.jpg
  9. Cooper, John Butler (1924). The History of Prahran. Melbourne: Prahran City Council. p. 286. Archived from the original on 26 January 2007. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
  10. "The Windsor Collision". The Age. 13 May 1887. Retrieved 11 July 2020.
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