Belgrave line

The Belgrave line is a commuter railway line on the Melbourne metropolitan railway network serving the city of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia. Operated by Metro Trains Melbourne, the line is coloured dark blue and is one of the four lines that constitute the Burnley group. It is the city's fourth-longest metropolitan railway line at 41.8 km. The line runs from Flinders Street station in central Melbourne to Belgrave station in the cities east, serving 31 stations via Burnley, Box Hill, Ringwood, and Upper Ferntree Gully. Beyond Belgrave, the narrow-gauge line has been restored as the Puffing Billy Railway, which runs tourist services to the original terminus of Gembrook.

The line operates for approximately 19 hours a day (from approximately 5:00 am to around 12:00 am) with 24 hour service available on Friday and Saturday nights. During peak hours, headways of up to 15 minutes are operated, with services every 20–30 minutes during off-peak hours. Trains on the Belgrave line run in a two three-car formations of X'Trapolis 100 trainsets.

Sections of the Belgrave line opened as early as 1889, with the line fully extended and re-gauged to Belgrave by 1962. The line was built to connect Melbourne and Ringwood with the rural towns of Bayswater, Boronia, Upper Ferntree Gully, and Belgrave, among others.

Since the 2010s, due to the heavily utilised infrastructure of the Belgrave line, significant improvements and upgrades have been made. Different packages of work have upgraded the corridor to replace sleepers, upgraded signalling technology, introduced new rolling stock, and removed seven of the nine remaining level crossings.

19th century
A rail branch was constructed from Ringwood to Upper Ferntree Gully in December 1889. A narrow-gauge line was opened from Upper Ferntree Gully to Gembrook station in December 1900, the second of four experimental narrow-gauge lines built by the Victorian Railways. These two lines would become joined and standardised to form the Belgrave railway line in the 20th century.

20th century
In 1921, the narrow-gauge section from Upper Ferntree Gully to Belgrave was converted to automatic signalling, the first such instance on single track in the Southern Hemisphere. This section was then reverted to Staff and Ticket safeworking in 1930. Electrification of the railway to Upper Ferntree Gully was implemented in November 1925.

Following a landslide in 1953, the narrow-gauge line was formally closed in April 1954, although services resumed as far as Belgrave for some "farewell specials", and then for the Puffing Billy Preservation Society until services ceased again in February 1958.

The line was partly duplicated between Bayswater and Lower Ferntree Gully (now Ferntree Gully) in February 1957.

The closing of the narrow-gauge line to Gembrook enabled the first stage of its planned rebuilding to Emerald as part of the suburban electrified system to proceed. This first stage, as far as Belgrave, of the new, broad-gauge, electrified extension opened in February 1962. It initially operated on the Staff and Ticket system but was converted to automatic signalling in March 1964, with the section from Ferntree Gully to Upper Ferntree Gully being converted the following day. Ringwood to Bayswater was converted to automatic signalling in June 1974, as was Bayswater to Ferntree Gully in July 1977. In December 1982, Ringwood -Bayswater was duplicated.

The Comeng trains were introduced to the Melbourne railway system in 1981, alongside the opening of the City Loop. Initially, along with the Belgrave line, they were only allowed to operate on the Alamein, Dandenong, Glen Waverley and Lilydale lines due to the trains 3.05-metre width.

21st century
A 2007 restructure of train ticketing in Melbourne involved the removal of Zone 3, with these stations being re-classified to Zone 2. This brought the cost of train fares down, improving system accessibility for the public.

In April 2016, plans to potentially run a regular revenue Tait set service on the Belgrave line was announced. This came following La Trobe MP Jason Wood's push for the idea as part of the greater "Puffing Billy master plan". The Tait service would be aimed at tourists visiting Puffing Billy. In November 2016, $1 million was committed to restoring a Tait set currently stored at the Newport Workshops. The Tait service is expected to originate at Flinders Street station as a direct service to Belgrave bypassing the City Loop.

Level Crossing Removals
The Level Crossing Removal Project has announced the removal of seven level crossings between the city and Ferntree Gully station, to be completed in stages from 2016 to 2025. In 2016, two level crossings were removed at Mountain Highway and Scoresby Road, Bayswater,through lowering the rail line under the road. These two removals also included a rebuilt Bayswater station and upgraded stabling facilities. A further two crossings were removed at Blackburn Road, Blackburn, and Heatherdale Road, Ringwood in January 2017. Both of these removals also involved lowering the rail line under the road, with a rebuilt Heatherdale station built as part of the project. Union and Mont Albert Roads were also been removed by lowering the rail line in May 2023. The removals also included closing Mont Albert and Surrey Hills stations, with a new station built in-between called "Union." The final crossing to be removed on the corridor was at Bedford Road in Ringwood by also lowering the rail line, completed in March 2024. At the conclusion of these removals, only two crossings remain, both in the section between Ferntree Gully and Upper Ferntree Gully.

Services
Services on the Belgrave line operates from approximately 5:00 am to around 12:00 daily. In general, during peak hours, train frequency is ~7 minutes on the Ringwood corridor (combined with the Lilydale line) and 15 minutes in the AM peak on the Belgrave Line while during non-peak hours the frequency is reduced to 20–30 minutes throughout the entire route. During certain periods of the day, services operate as a shuttle to Ringwood due to lower demand. On Friday nights and weekends, services run 24 hours a day, with 60 minute frequencies available outside of normal operating hours.

Train services on the Belgrave line are also subjected to maintenance and renewal works, usually on selected Fridays and Saturdays. Shuttle bus services are provided throughout the duration of works for affected commuters.

Stopping patterns
Legend — Station status
 * ◼ Premium Station – Station staffed from first to last train
 * ◻ Host Station – Usually staffed during morning peak, however this can vary for different stations on the network.

Legend — Stopping patterns Some services do not operate via the City Loop
 * ● – All trains stop
 * ◐ – Some services do not stop
 * ▼ – Only outbound trains stop
 * | – Trains pass and do not stop

Operators
The Belgrave line has had a total of 6 operators since its opening in 1889. The majority of operations throughout its history have been government run: from its first service in 1889 until the 1999 privatisation of Melbourne's rail network, four different government operators have run the line. These operators, Victorian Railways, the Metropolitan Transit Authority, the Public Transport Corporation, and Hillside Trains have a combined operational length of 110 years. Hillside Trains was privatised in August 1999 and later rebranded Connex Melbourne. Metro Trains Melbourne, the current private operator, then took over the operations in 2009. Both private operators have had a combined operational period of 24 years.

Route
The Belgrave line forms a mostly curved route from the Melbourne central business district to its terminus in Belgrave. The route is 41.8 km long and predominantly double-tracked, however, between Flinders Street station and Richmond, the track is widened to 12 tracks, narrowing to 4 tracks between Richmond and Burnley before narrowing to 3 tracks between Burnley and Box Hill. Finally, the line narrows to two tracks between Box Hill and Ferntree Gully before narrowing to a single track to its terminus. After Ferntree Gully, passing loops and island platforms are present at Upper Ferntree Gully, Upwey, and Belgrave. After departing from its terminus at Flinders Street, the Belgrave line traverses both flat and hilly country, with some curves (more towards the end of the line) and fairly significant earthworks for parts of the line. Sections of the line have been elevated or lowered into a cutting to eliminate level crossings. Despite some removals, there are a small number of level crossings still present, with no current plans to remove them.

The line follows the same alignment as the Alamein, Glen Waverley, and Lilydale lines, with the four services splitting onto different routes at Burnley. The Alamein, Belgrave, and Lilydale services continue till the Alamein line splits off at Camberwell, with the two services continuing together till Ringwood. After departing Ringwood station, the Belgrave line heads south, with the Lilydale line heading in an eastern direction. Almost all of the rail line goes through built-up suburbs, however, the rail line becomes peri-urban towards its terminus in Belgrave.

Stations
The line serves 31 stations across the 49-kilometre (30-mile)-long track. The stations are a mix of elevated, lowered, underground, and ground level designs. Underground stations are present in the City Loop and Box Hill, with the majority of elevated and lowered stations being constructed as part of level crossing removals.

Rolling stock
The Belgrave line uses X'Trapolis 100 electric multiple unit (EMU) trains operating in a two three-car configuration, with three doors per side on each carriage, and can accommodate up to 432 seated passengers in each six car configuration. The trains were originally built between 2002 and 2004 as well as between 2009 and 2020, with a total of 212 three-car sets constructed. The trains are shared with 7 other metropolitan train lines and have been in service since 2003.

Alongside the passenger trains, Belgrave line tracks and equipment are maintained by a fleet of engineering trains. The four types of engineering trains are: the shunting train, designed for moving trains along non-electrified corridors and for transporting other maintenance locomotives; for track evaluation; designed for evaluating track and its condition, the overhead inspection train; designed for overhead wiring inspection, and the infrastructure evaluation carriage, designed for general infrastructure evaluation. Most of these trains are repurposed locomotives previously used by V/Line, Metro Trains, and the Southern Shorthaul Railroad.

Accessibility
All stations that are new or rebuilt are fully accessible. Projects improving station accessibility have included the Level Crossing Removal Project, which involves station rebuilds and upgrades, and individual station upgrade projects. These works have made significant strides in improving network accessibility, with more than 58% of Belgrave line stations classified as fully accessible.

Signalling
The Belgrave line uses three-position signalling with automatic block signalling (ABS) and automatic and track control (ATC) safeworking systems. Three position signalling was first introduced on the line in 1919, with the final section of the line converted to the new type of signalling by 1960. Automatic and track control are used with the centre line between Burnley and Box Hill, and between Ferntree Gully and the line's terminus in Belgrave.