Clayton station re-opens, works continue at Rosanna
A part of the Eastern / Autumn school holiday construction blitz has come to a close with the re-opening of rail services to the newest of Melbourne's rebuilt stations in Clayton.
The Minister for Public Transport has opened the new Clayton Station this morning marking the second of five new stations to re-open that are being rebuilt as part of the level crossing removal project between Caulfield and Dandenong.
Clayton Road and Centre Road are now level crossing free. The new elevated track over Centre and Clayton Roads, as well as the new Clayton station, were built adjacent to the original station and track, utilising the wide rail corridor in the area.
The design for the new Clayton station mimics the first station to open - Noble Park - where the new track is aligned on either side of an island platform, with escalators, lifts and stairs allowing access to the entry located below.
The same distinctive canopy also adorns Clayton station - and they will also appear over Hughesdale, Murrumbeena and Carnegie stations.
The removal of Clayton Road and Centre Road brings the total number of level crossings removed to 17.
Jacinta Allan said on the opening of Clayton's new station "it's simply not okay to have ambulances regularly waiting at boom gates for five or ten minutes at a stretch - yet this is exactly what has happened at this crossing for decades."
The Minister continued "this brings us another step closer to achieving exactly what we said we would - getting rid of every single level crossing between Caulfield and Dandenong."
New Clayton station #skyrailing #gettingitdone pic.twitter.com/OEtwhyJx8f
— Shaun Leane (@ShaunLeaneMP) April 16, 2018
Meanwhile, the Easter construction blitz is still underway on the Hurstbridge line with the Level Crossing Removal Authority (LXRA) posting new images over the weekend on the Rosanna project.
Rail, sleepers and ballast have now been installed on the new rail viaduct with station works in full swing.
Rosanna's new station, rail-over-road bridge is also part of a tunnel duplication project that is removing a single track section on the Hurstbridge Line.
The first of the single track pinch points was duplicated late last decade and with the works to duplicate the Heidelberg-Rosanna section to be completed by early May, the only remaining single track sections on the Hurstbridge line are beyond Greensborough.
Click here to see the Level Crossing Removal Authority's Rosanna image gallery.
