Railways - A Major Employer

In Victoria, the early railways were privately owned such as the Melbourne and Hobson's Bay Railway Co. which constructed a line from Sandridge (Port Melbourne) to the City which opened in September 1854, three years after the discovery of gold at Ballarat. This became the first railway in Australia. Two other private rail lines were built, one in 1858 ending finally at Hawthorn and one from Spencer Street to Footscray. The Geelong and Melbourne Railway Company completed a line to Geelong and a further connection of Geelong to Ballarat was designed to help the gold mining industry but in the end was the cause of much reduced manufacturing activity in Ballarat.

Railways became a huge industry, with some 10,000 workers engaged by 1891, engines were being produced by the Phoenix foundry in Ballarat and sleeper cutting became a substantial part of the timber industry. The development of rail connections from capital cities to major country industrial cities led to the eclipse of the latter in many cases, for example, Ballarat. Further, where extensive government railway workshops were established in the city, it again led to severe reduction in industrial activity in the country, for example, at Gawler in South Australia.

Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering