The South Gippsland railway has almost all gone now, and services can only run as far as Cranbourne, but in its glory days it ran from Dandenong to Woodside, and it was critical to the growth and survival of many little towns along the way.

We've talked before about building the line – in this story I am going to talk about it closing down.
After leaving Dandenong the next stations were Lyndhurst, Cranbourne, Clyde and Tooradin. Tooradin was well north of the town and was called Sherwood, briefly. This section was opened in 1888 and had four stations.
The line then went across the southern edge of the Great Swamp through Dalmore, Koo wee rup, Monomeith and so to Lang Lang, the eighth station from Dandenong. Crossing the swamp is an epic story in itself. Then the line climbed steeply to Nyora and to Loch. This part was completed in 1890 and now there were 10 stations, 10 places where the mails and the newspapers arrived promptly and where travel in an out was far more simple.
From Loch to Leongatha was completed in 1891, through Jeetho, Bena, Whitelaw, Korumburra, and downhill to Kardella, Ruby and Leongatha. That is already 17 little communities linked to the outside world as never before. The line dropped as it twisted and turned its way to Gwyther. Now it had a fairly flat run but there was some brilliant engineering getting it through the hills and over the Tarwin. It went through Koonwarra, Tarwin, Meeniyan, Stony Creek, Buffalo and Boys to Fish Creek, station number 25.
After leaving Fish Creek there was a steep climb to Hoddle Range and then a steady slope down to Foster, at least if you were heading eastward. After Foster the line was now onto the narrow coastal flat between the southern Strzeleckis and Corner Inlet, and then Bass Strait. This took the rails past Welshpool, Hedley, Gelliondale, Alberton and Port Albert. The port was reached in 1892, though the main line never went right into Port Albert. Now there were 31 stations.
The next stations were Yarram, Devon, Calrossie, Won Wron, Napier and Woodside, but the line had stopped at Alberton for a spell and then in 1921 it was extended to Won Wron and in 1923 to Woodside. There was still talk of extending northeast to Sale.
That gave it 38 stations, if my count is accurate. There were only 45 five on the much longer main line between Dandenong and Orbost.
In 1892 a spur ran down to Coal Creek from Korumburra, and in 1894 another was built out to Jumbunna, extended in 1896 to Outtrim North and Outtrim. In 1894 a short line ran down to Strzelecki Siding from Korumburra. The surprising network, with five 'stations', was all about the black coal that was mined here before the State Coal Mine came to Wonthaggi in 1910. The Korumburra fields yielded high-quality steaming coal, critical to the railway system right across the state.
In 1910 a crucially important line left the South Gippsland line at Nyora to pass through the hamlets of Woodleigh, Kernot, Almurta, Glen Forbes and Woolamai, before the climb up to Anderson and the drop to Kilcunda, Dalyston, the State Coal Mine and Wonthaggi. That was another 10 stations. This line was a little lightly-built, especially for trains carrying coal, because the line was built by a local co-operative who wanted the line so badly they were prepared to do it themselves. It seems they might have overestimated their abilities and their capital but, still, it worked.
The completion of the Wonthaggi line meant more coal trains passing through Nyora, and it must have been a reasonably busy little station at times. The coal trains from Korumburra had some steady climbing to do to get to Nyora, so they were kept short, and therefore lighter, but were joined at Nyora as longer trains for the run to the Big Smoke.
I don't know whether the Korumburra coal trains were ever merged with the Wonthaggi trains, but if this did happen it would not have been for long because the state Coal Mine at Wonthaggi was more or less the death knell for the Korumburra fields, though some smaller operations went on around Korumburra at least into the 1960s.
We forget that the small trains of that era still weighed many tons, and the locomotive enginemen (we called them train-drivers) had to be very aware of climbs coming up so they could build as much momentum as possible, and to be equally aware of the downward grades so they could conserve coal and water and let that momentum work for them.
In 1922, while the last eastern extension was being built out to Woodside the Strzelecki branch line was built from Koo wee rup through Bayles, Catani and Yannathan, all easy running. At Yannathan the climb started, through Heath Hill to Athlone and Topiram, getting a little steeper to Triholm and a whole lot steeper up to Strzelecki, climbing in 630 feet in about seven miles. The whole line was built inside a year. That added eight more stations.
Much later a branch line was run down to the Barry's Beach Oil Terminal line and there were sidings in various places to serve particular industries, like the Koala siding just out of Lang Lang where clean sand was brought out for glass manufacturing.
I think that makes 59 stations of one sort or another, most of which were tiny lineside platforms, some serving communities that have vanished. In their time, tiny or not, the rails brought mail, and groceries and 'stores' and took out heavy loads that would have taken days longer by 'road'. Some of the stations, notably Korumburra and Leongatha were large and handsome constructions.
Dairying, fishing, raising cattle, coal mining and sawmilling all became viable industries and South Gippsland developed a much healthier economy. That could not have been done without a railway.
This was to be about the closing of the Great Southern Railway (not the official name) a.k.a. the South Gippsland line, but I let it get away from me. Railway buffs are a little like that.