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Shenley Station
Photo: The site of Shenley Station as a goods line in 1942
Shenley was a railway station on the Outer Circle railway line. The station opened on 24 March 1891 and had two side platforms on a loop, with the main platform located on the east side of the line.
The station was closed with the rest of the Outer Circle on 12 April 1893, but was reopened on 14 May 1900 to serve passengers on the 'Deepdene Dasher' shuttle service. After reopening it only had one track and a platform on the east side of the line. The station was finally closed again on 9 October 1927, along with the passenger service, but goods trains to East Kew railway station passed through the site until 1943.
A junction existed 200 yards (180 m) to the south of the station, with the main line going to Riversdale railway station and the loop line towards Canterbury station on the Lilydale railway line. This connection was only open between 15 March 1892 and 12 April 1893.
Outer Circle Railway Line
The Outer Circle was built during the Melbourne land boom of the 1880s. Money was no object, and greedy capitalists saw the Colony of Victoria as a valuable investment opportunity. It was originally intended to bring goods trains into Melbourne from Gippsland. But after the State Government purchased the Melbourne & Hobson's Bay United Railway Company there was no longer a need to build the Outer Circle.
The first section was opened was on 24 March 1890, from Oakleigh to Waverley Road, and on to Burnley. It was followed by the line from Waverley Road to Camberwell on 24 March 1890, and the Riversdale to Fairfield Park section on 24 March 1891. The track was used in its entirety for only 26 months with the Fairfield to Deepdene end closing first. Next to close was the Norwood to Oakleigh section. 5 years after its construction, for a 12 month period, no trains operated on the railway at all. The depression of the 1890's meant that development in the outer areas of Melbourne was delayed.
Eventually the section between Ashburton and Deepdene was reopened for passengers, with a few extra stations operating. Amongst these were Stanley* (Mont Albert Road) renamed Roystead; Hartwell Station renamed Burwood; and Hartwell Hill renamed Hartwell. The station for the latter came from Walhalla. Stations were not manned and passengers bought tickets from the guard. Trains were serviced in Camberwell. This line was very popular with its passengers and continued until 1927. There wouldn't have been much traffic on the roads, but when a main road like Whitehorse Road was reached, the train had to stop, the guard with his red flag would step out onto the road, the train would cross, stop again and wait for the guard to climb back on board. The 'Deepdene Dasher' did its last run in 1927.
Although parts of the Outer Circle line were driven by politics and land speculators, the main purpose of the line was to be a route of produce to be brought to Melbourne by connecting the Gippsland Railway to the main government railway terminal at Spencer Street without requiring travel along the privately owned railway from Flinders Street. The majority of the former Outer Circle Line has now been converted into a bicycle trail called the Anniversary Trail to commemorate 100 years since the opening of the railway. The former rail corridor is almost entirely intact and includes sections in steep cuttings and embankments and several large bridges. The former bridge across the Yarra River at Fairfield is now used by traffic on the Chandler Highway.
Information from https://www.onlymelbourne.com.au/outer-circle-railway
Photo: The 'Deepdene Dasher'
The Cache
At the posted coordinates you are standing in front of a sign.
A = The number of Gs in the photographer's name
B = The number of words after the / in the top line of text above the photograph
C = The number of letters in the photographer's surname
D = 7 if it was bronze, 8 if it was silver, or 9 if it was gold that washed up when digging gravel in the nearby cutting
The cache can be found not far away at S37° 49.ABC' E145° 3.DBD'
The cache is in a 1.2L Sistema container with a themed camouflage. Please use stealth as this is a busy area.
Congratulations Sunrise_wanderer for being FTF.