Living the Victorian Railways

Tony Gianopoulos remembers his father and other immigrants, who built Victoria’s railways.


As in other industries, the Greeks in the railways became renowned for their loyal service and ability to complete gruelling projects with their bare hands.

From its people to its rolling stock, the railways in Victoria were never short of character, the old red rattlers never left you stranded. Cancellations due to overheating are a modern day ‘plastic’ train phenomena.

By 1951, the Victorian Railways had already employed 1,500 so called, ‘New Australians’ out of a total workforce of around 30,000. In due course, the migrant ratio would swell as additional boatloads of Europeans landed in our ports eager to earn a coin.

Migrant rail workers in the 1950’s were disadvantaged because they were prevented from having a voice in a rail union which was headed by strong Catholic conservative leaders, viewed all South-Eastern Europeans as potential communists.

Owing to the pioneering efforts of George Zangalis and Domenico Fammartino, Greeks and Italians gradually exerted influence in the Victorian branch of the Australian Railways Union.

One of the first ever migrant workers committee in Australia was formed due to the inspiring efforts of shop stewards like Tony Rappas who represented the Greek carriage cleaners at the Spencer Street passenger yard.

By the late 1950’s, the Victorian Railways were fair dinkum about increasing freight tonnages and passenger patronage.

New S class locos were bought and management were keen to assign hard working migrants to replace ageing infrastructure, as well as build new track and signals from Spencer Street to the NSW border.

Incompatible track widths at Albury forced passengers and freight to change trains; causing more delays than what people experience nowadays when going on long-haul flights to the US or Europe with stop-overs.

Since opening in 1962, the standard guage line project to Albury stands as a testimony to the many migrant track and signal gangs who installed infrastructure without the aid of modern machinery.

By 1970, 2.8 million tonnes of freight annually were hauled on the new line. Regular commodities included tropical fruits from Queensland and iron from the Newcastle and Port Kembla steelworks.

The link also opened up new frontiers for freight forwarding giants like TNT and Brambles who profited from the welcomed efficiency as they began railing bulk goods to all parts of the eastern seaboard.

In 1960, my father George Giannopoulos, became a permanent employee of the Victorian Railways when he joined Signal Mechanical Construction – a department which was dubbed ‘the Greek community’ thanks to its almost exclusive Hellenic heritage.

During his 40 year career, my father helped start railway careers for eight of his friends and relatives including my brother.

When my father was away for days he would sleep in workmen’s sleeper wagons that were parked next to noisy mainlines as rumbling freights passed by during the night.

On one winter’s night in Ballarat, he developed a bad tooth ache as he tried to cope with the wagon’s primitive heating which warmed only the feet.

As a three year old, I remember my family running up the street to greet my father as he returned back to leafy Malvern after a week long stint installing signals in dry Mildura.

It wasn’t long before my family became geography experts. Every town that dad worked was underlined by my brother in the country timetable.

In its glory days, the VR serviced most of Victoria with over 50 branch lines.

From its people to its rolling stock, the railways in Victoria were never short of character, the old red rattlers never left you stranded.

Cancellations due to overheating are a modern day ‘plastic’ train phenomena. The railways had their own lingo as well.

Freight carriages were called ‘wagons’, whilst sleek passenger trains were known by the likes of Spirit of Progress and Southern Aurora.

Express freights to Adelaide were nicknamed ‘jets’.

For a moment imagine the drama unfolding on a typical evening at Tottenham Yard in the early 1990’s.

Shunters clinging onto moving wagons; hand lamps flashing in the dark; crashing couplers echoing a mile away; and instructions clattering over the radio like “9, 1, 4, 9, you’re ready to depart”.

The driver then opens up the throttle and the sound from the 3,000 horsepower, turbo charged engine reverberates inside the office where the Yard Master plots shunting manoeuvres to make up the next train.

Rail yards are like a world of their own. With so many freight trains to run, yard work in the old VR was crowded and dangerous. ‘Loose shunting’ was a common practise to speed up the sorting process.

While the shunters scrambled to hop onto moving wagons to apply their independent brakes at the desired spot, the locomotive moved off to another position to ‘kick out’ more wagons.

This prevented the time consuming task of having the loco personally position each vehicle into what usually was very lengthy sorting tracks.

From its carriage cleaners to its track maintainers, and to those who sweated behind the run down walls of the repair workshops, railway men and women toiled for decades and received little appreciation for keeping a massive Victorian railway system fluid 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Time has come to pay proper homage to the men who built the Victorian Railway.