Mentone Railway Station

Quatrefoil has partnered with GJM Heritage and Frontier Heritage to consult on several of the Level Crossing Removal Projects rolling out across Melbourne, including that at Balcombe Road, Mentone. Mentone Railway Station comprises timber up-side and down-side station buildings and landscaped gardens, all of which are included in the Victorian Heritage Register [place number H2099]. The buildings are to be made redundant by the new station - located to the south of the heritage buildings - and is proposed for adaptive reuse.

Initially, it was thought that the rail-under-road solution proposed would necessitate that both the large up-side building and the smaller down-side building be temporarily relocated, to allow for the passage of pile-driving equipment along the rail corridor. This represented a substantial and difficult exercise that was ultimately abandoned, with only the smaller building able to be craned out of the way. The larger building trembled nervously as the pile driver rolled past within 100mm of its platform-side elevation! But suffered no substantial damage, and is as of 2020 undergoing conservation works to prepare it for its new future use.

Quatrefoil was initially engaged to design the lifting cages and methodology for both buildings, but ultimately our works focused on the careful dismantlement, storage and reinstatement of the main (up-side) building’s platform canopy.