East Block southern extension

FFF25 East Block Southern extension 13th Jan ’23

The main section of EB southern extension extends 350 feet from the south wall of EB, and is from tracks 8 – 23, or bays 3 – 8. (there are 3 tracks in bays 3 – 7, and 1 in bay.  So the EB southern extension is actually bigger than the original front section of EB. With the extension of the paint shop 2 -7 roads, the upholstery shop was moved to the other side of the dividing wall into 8 -10 roads in the southern extension. Upholstery work slowly declined with the production of railway carriages by other suppliers. By the time of the Doring report in 1988, this area had been taken over for tarpaulins manufacture and repair which was also in decline. This indicates why Steamrail got use of the huge original tarp shop building on the northwest of the heritage site. The tarp shop was disused because the use of tarpaulins had diminished so greatly by the mid-80s.  All the rest of tracks 8 – 22 was used for the production and repair of passenger and freight rolling stock. Brick doorways in the southern wall of EB gave access so all these track could be lengthened into the roofed southern extension. Track 23 has always remained for the timberwork and machining section.

It becomes easier to see why some bureaucrat in the 90’s sees EB as a huge undercover area and just the place to store Melbourne’s ‘W class tram’ fleet which were being replaced at the time! ie: free government storage! A count in 2018 showed there were 193 trams on site and 173 of them were inside East Block. The NRWPG has no problem with saving trams. However, Newport railway workshops has no history with Melbourne’s MMBW trams, but we don’t agree that all these trams should be stored undercover while historical ‘one off’ examples of railway rolling stock are rusting and rotting away in the yard right outside. eg: a 100-year-old horse box wagon that was used to transport horses to the Melbourne Cup, a pinch gas wagon, a 4-wheel riveted fuel tanker. The trams are not even stored properly – they are standard gauge so they are just jammed together sitting on the ground.

In 2018 the government finally came up with their ‘Retired Trams Strategy’ to find a new home and remove the trams. Instead of the predicted two years to complete the job, four years later in April ’22, VicTrack said about 75 of the 193 trams had been relocated. There is now a huge amount of space in EB and we have been pleading with Victrack to get the historic railway rolling stock under cover, so far to no avail.