We did it! Locals board first trains to Mernda in 59 years

Keith Power and Roslyn Wilson, grew up in the Mernda area, were among thousands to ride the first public trains to Mernda in 59 years.Credit: Meredith O'Shea

It’s hard to imagine today, but in the 1950s, Roslyn Wilson would hail trains to pick her up at Stopping Place Number 9, across the road from her house in Plenty Road, south of Mernda.

There was no platform — the driver of the train would let down a ladder for you to climb up.

Mrs Wilson remembers her mother, Lyla, running out to collect day-old chickens sent up on the train.

After Saturday night visits, a cousin would set fire to a rolled-up copy of The Age and stand on the tracks waving it to alert the 8pm city-bound train to stop.

If he missed it, the next train was on Monday morning.

Back then, Mernda was a rural community of vast farms, a pub, two stores, a garage and a hall.

Today, Mernda is an outer suburb. The farmers' fields are giving way to  housing estates, supermarkets and schools as the population explodes.

Mrs Wilson’s old house was long ago bulldozed to make way for the Plenty Road widening and Stopping Place Number 9 now has a shiny new station called Hawkstowe.

On Sunday, after 10 years of lobbying, the first locals in 59 years boarded a local train to ride from South Morang to Mernda, celebrating their first commute since the original line closed with the rise of car and truck travel in 1959.

Fares were free and at the new Mernda station there was free food, bands and a historical display.

A ticket for the Mernda rail line.Credit: Facebook/Extend the Rail Line to Mernda

Darren Peters, from the South Morang and Mernda Rail Alliance, said he was ‘‘ecstatic’’.

He said while the government took credit, resurrecting the line was a community effort, including securing politicians’ support in a marginal electorate at the 2014 state election.

Mrs Wilson, 75, braved frigid weather to come from Mt Waverley and joined fellow ex-Mernda-ites Keith Power, now living in Dromana, and Michael and Ethel Bourke, now based in Diamond Creek, on the first train to Mernda just after noon.

Mr Power, who grew up at Carome, a bluestone farmhouse 1.5 kilometres from Stopping Place Number 9, remembers commuting every day for four years to his high school Preston Tech, by train, from 1951.

And for another four years, he took the train to study engineering in Footscray. At night he’d walk home across paddocks in the dark.

The old Mernda train stationCredit: Facebook/Extend the Rail Line to Mernda

Noting the clogged Sunday traffic along Bridge Inn Road beside today’s Mernda station, Mr Power says the rail will once again be locals' lifeline to the city, saving them from congestion woes.

Mr Power was impressed by the new Mernda station, a metal and concrete giant with its soaring ceiling, the platform above held up by marching pylons.

Old Mernda-ites would never have dreamed of such a huge structure rising out of the pastures.

‘‘When we lived here it was absolutely rural. We would never have imagined Melbourne getting to Mernda, and that’s what it is,’’ he said.

Regular trains between Mernda and the city start on Sunday, August 26.