Why Is the Alamein Line So Short and So Neglected?

 Every Melbourne train nerd has a soft spot for the Alamein line. It's short, it's a little weird, and it has this slightly forlorn energy — like that one colleague who keeps getting passed over for promotion despite clearly being capable. Riding it feels a bit like discovering a hidden level in a video game. You board at Flinders Street, blink, and somehow you're in quiet leafy suburbia and the train has run out of track.

But here's the thing: the Alamein line's smallness isn't an accident. It's not a quirk. It's the result of over a century of bad luck, cancelled plans, political indifference and infrastructure decisions that made sense at the time and look absolutely baffling now.

Let me explain.

It started as something much bigger

What we now call the Alamein line was originally part of the Outer Circle railway, which operated from 1890 until its closure in 1897.  At its most ambitious, the Outer Circle ran from Fairfield station all the way down to Oakleigh, covering much of what is now the City of Boroondara. This wasn't just a suburban shuttle — the original idea was that it could carry Gippsland freight traffic around the outside of the city, bypassing the congested inner network entirely.

It was a bold vision. And it failed almost immediately.

The economic depression of the early 1890s saw home building in the area cease, and the line never carried the Gippsland traffic it was designed for. Passenger numbers were dismal. Sections closed one by one. By 1897 the whole thing had been shuttered.

What survived — barely — was a short stub of track from Camberwell down to Ashburton, which was quietly reopened in 1898 operated by a steam locomotive and a single carriage. Just the one. That's not a train service, that's a polite suggestion.

The extension that almost wasn't

The line eventually got electrified in 1924, and then after World War II it got one meaningful moment of expansion. Alamein station opened on 28 June 1948, serving a new Housing Commission estate built for people displaced by the war. The station was named after the estate, which in turn was named after the famous North African battlefield. It opened without much fanfare — no official ceremony from Victorian Railways, no local politicians, no councillors. 

That kind of says it all, doesn't it. Even the people who built it didn't turn up.

The 1980s nearly killed it for good

If you think the line feels underinvested now, you should know that it almost ceased to exist entirely. The 1980 Lonie Report recommended the closure of the Alamein line outright, along with the Port Melbourne, St Kilda, Altona, Williamstown and Sandringham lines. The idea was financial rationalisation — these lines were deemed not worth keeping.

The Alamein line survived, reportedly in no small part because former Premier Jeff Kennett, whose electorate of Burwood was served by the line, helped ensure it remained open. Which is either reassuring or mildly terrifying depending on your view of infrastructure decisions being driven by a single politician's electorate.

So what does the line look like now?

Honestly, it's not as bad as its reputation suggests. Services run from around 5am to midnight daily, with 24-hour service available on Friday and Saturday nights. Off-peak, it typically operates as a shuttle between Camberwell and Alamein, with through services to and from Flinders Street in the AM and PM weekday peaks.

The suburbs it serves — Hartwell, Burwood, Ashburton — are decent, established areas with real residential density. This isn't a line running through paddocks. And yet the Alamein line carries only about 1.5% of all passengers across the metropolitan rail network. 

That number is damning. But I'd argue it's as much a cause as it is a consequence. If you run a shuttle service that terminates at Camberwell off-peak and forces passengers to change trains for the city, you're going to suppress demand. You're training people to take the tram or the car instead.

Could it be something more?

There's a proposal that gets raised every few years: extend the Alamein line southward through the old Outer Circle corridor, past a new station at Chadstone Shopping Centre, and connect it to the Pakenham and Cranbourne lines at Oakleigh. This would create an interchange with the Glen Waverley line at East Malvern, and give the entire south-eastern network a useful orbital connection it currently doesn't have. 

It's a genuinely interesting idea. An orbital rail link that bypasses the CBD entirely would be transformative for cross-suburban travel — something Melbourne's radial network has always been terrible at. A study to examine this properly would cost around $2 million , which in the context of Melbourne's current infrastructure spending is essentially a rounding error.

Whether any government will ever actually commission that study is another question. The Alamein line has been waiting for someone to take it seriously since 1898. It's got patience, at least.