The Metropolitan Goods Line is a partially closed, freight only railway line in Sydney.
Route[]
The Metropolitan Goods Line starts at Sefton Park Junction, at a double triangle junction between the South Sydney Freight, Bankstown and Main Southern lines. This branch serves trains entering Sydney via the Main Southern line. Another branch of the line starts at Flemington, at another double triangle junction with the Main Suburban and Olympic Park lines. This branch serves train entering Sydney via the Main Western and Main Northern lines.
The two branches merge just north of Enfield Marshalling Yards. This yard is very large and the main site in Sydney where trains are loaded and unloaded. The line then heads south to Campsie, where the line starts running alongside the Bankstown line.
There is a triangle junction at Dulwich Hill with the Rozelle Line. This line heads north towards Darling Harbour and White Bay, which once had large yards where freight was loaded onto ships. After Darling Harbour, the line runs 300m inside a tunnel to Central station, joining the Main Suburban line near Mortuary station.
The main goods line continues to Marrickville, where there is a triangle junction with the Illawara line. The main line continues around to freight terminals at St Peters and Port Botany.
History[]
The first section to open was Central to Darling Harbour in 1855. By 1908, goods traffic had started to increase and so goods lines had to be constructed to ease the pressure on existing lines. Most of the line that exists now opened between 1922-25.
By the 1990s, the Rozelle line had fallen into disuse, with traffic now going to newer ports such as Port Botany and Port Kembla. In 1997, the section between Darling Harbour and Wentworth Park was converted to light rail and the section between Darling Harbour and Central closed. The light rail was further extended over the goods line to Lilyfield in 2000 and then all the way to Dulwich Hill in 2014.
Services[]
The line is still used extensively by freight trains from all over the state. A shuttle service, operated by Linx, runs between Enfield and Port Botany. Most containers bound for Port Botany are transfered onto this service.
The line is operated and maintained by Australian Rail Track Corporation (ARTC) as part of their 99 year lease of the major freight routes in the state. The line is controlled via NSW double colour light signalling from ARTC's Network Control Centre South (NCCS) at Junee.
L1 Dulwich Hill line trams now operate over the Rozelle line.
There were once also workers trains that ran on the goods line to transport workers to Enfield Yard and special event trains that ran over the goods line to Canterbury Racecourse.