Windsor railway station, Melbourne

Windsor is a railway station in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It serves the Sandringham line and is located in the suburb of Windsor. It is near the intersection of Chapel Street and Dandenong Road, and is 6.2 kilometres by rail from Flinders Street Station in the city centre.

History

Windsor Station was originally called "Chapel Street Station", and was the terminus for trains from the Brighton Beach line. It was run by the St Kilda and Brighton Railway Company, who built a loop branch line connecting the Brighton line to the now defunct St Kilda line. Trains travelled to St Kilda terminus, and then "backed out" onto the branch line to Windsor. The loop line was constructed on wooden trestles across the swampy grounds now known as the Albert Park Lake, and had a raised embankment with a bridge [1] over St Kilda Road. The first train on this loop line was on 3 December 1859, and opened to the public ten days later. There were no trains after 7pm at night on the branch line; patrons simply walked to their homes in Prahran from St Kilda station in Fitzroy Street.

A short time after the loop line was constructed a competing connection was built between Windsor and South Yarra 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.

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 in some cases, 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 passenger train between Prahran Station and Windsor Station. Four people were killed and over a 100 severely injured. The locomotive of the passenger train stopped to await a semaphore signal that indicated the line ahead was clear. When the signal was given, the driver found he could not release the brake on the locomotive due to a ruptured steam pipe. An express train from Melbourne was scheduled 10 minutes behind the passenger train, and due to a curve in the track and high embankments had no way of knowing the train ahead was stranded. It is 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.

Gallery

• 
  The heritage Windsor railway station

References

Reference: Cooper, J. B. (1924) "History of Prahran" pp179-188, p286

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