The Botany Line, opened in 1925, branched off the Bankstown Line at Marrickville, and initially had simple sidings provided at Mascot, Stephens Road and a dead end siding as well as a loop at Botany.
It grew rapidly from there, and whilst in past times at its peak in the 1970/80s it had some 20 different business sidings utilising its services (then provided by the New South Wales Government Railways), the only remaining operational aspects of the line are Cooks River good yard (which first became operational back in 1947) and the Boral siding (purchased by Boral in 1963 and originally used for bitumen/road base products but now used exclusively for aggregate delivery for its ready mixed-concrete business). However with the introduction of Port Botany in 1979, its subsequent expansion over the last 40 years and the privatisation of the railways, we now have QUBE, PacNat, SSR, LINX, Crawfords and Fletchers moving vast quantities of containers and other intermodal freight to three large container terminal operators, DP World, Patricks and Hutchisons.
Where the presentation Botany Line and the Veterans, produced back in the late 1990s, saw 2000 to 4000 HP (single or twin 422, 442 or 80 Class) on trains of 15 to 40 ‘forty footer’ intermodal wagons shunted at the ports with 48 or 49 Class, in this presentation, Botany Line 2020, we have 3000 to 12,000 HP combinations hauling as many as 80 wagons, many with ‘sixty footer’ and ‘eighty footer’ intermodal wagons, to and from Port Botany, requiring them to run around their own trains and shunt them back into the container terminals. We also see how Botany Yard and Port Botany have changed to handle these long trains. The ‘New’ Yard and the former ‘Bunnerong Exchange Sidings’ have been merged to provide a yard with the required length of sidings.
Locomotives seen in service include C, CF, CLF, EL, FIE, G, MZ, PHC, QBX, TT, VL, 11 and 81 Class in the liveries of CFCLA, Crawfords, Fletchers, Independent Rail, LINX, PacNat, QUBE and SSR.
Approximate run time: 163 minutes.