Craigieburn Heavy Train Maintenance Facility Victoria.

GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE - RAIL

The Craigieburn Train Maintenance Facility project represents a significant investment in rail infrastructure by the State of Victoria, with the facility being built to service the needs of the expanding train fleet of the Melbourne metropolitan train network. Darren was part of a multidisciplinary design team appointed by the Victorian Department of Transport to design the facility. Darren provided landscape services, working closely with the Department to ensure that the facility site represented industry best-practice and satisfied environmental and aboriginal heritage considerations.

The design solution provides a safe working environment to support the Department of Transport’s availability goals for its expanding rail transport fleet requirements. The scope of the landscape services comprised landscaping of the warehouse facility, office buildings, staff amenities, parking, entry, roads and all hard and soft landscaping.

The site presented significant constraints including hard rock and a sensitive creek environment. It was also one of only two listed locations in Victoria where European and Aboriginal Heritage occurred together. These issues meant the site required extensive archaeological investigation, as well as sampling and recording of artefacts for work to proceed.

These considerations were taken to be advantages in the landscape proposal and planting which uses indigenous species to complement the endangered grassland habitat and dry stone walling to reflect the site’s more recent history.