Railways in Melbourne
In February 2015, the State Government established the Melbourne Metro Rail Authority to oversee planning for new twin 9-kilometre rail tunnels through the central city between South Kensington station and South Yarra. The new Metro Tunnel will have five new underground stations and connect the Pakenham and Cranbourne lines with the Sunbury line, creating a new route through the CBD as an alternative to the City Loop. New underground stations will be created at Arden, Parkville, Domain and two new CBD stations, State Library and Town Hall. Enabling works were underway by 2016 and major construction work on the tunnel and stations began in 2017.The project has an estimated cost of $11 billion and is scheduled to be complete by 2025.
Sydney–Melbourne co-axial cable
The Sydney–Melbourne co-axial cable was a major telecommunications engineering and construction project in south-eastern Australia in the early 1960s, designed to significantly increase telecommunications transmission capacity between Sydney and Melbourne and other centres, along its route including Canberra.
The cable's route was approximately 960 kilometres and roughly followed the Hume Highway as it existed at that time. Key points along the route were Sydney–Liverpool–Campbelltown–Bowral–Goulburn–Canberra–Yass–Gundagai–Wagga Wagga–Culcairn–Albury–Wangaratta–Benalla–Euroa–Seymour–Melbourne.
It was five years in the making and cost £6.89 million to complete. Its prime purpose was to boost the capacity for telecommunications between the two major cities. The cable was made up of three pairs of tubes, each pair capable of carrying 1,260 simultaneous telephone connections.
There was a marker stone commemorating the official opening of the cable at 532 Hume Highway, Casula but it has since been removed. There is a corresponding marker stone in Gordon Reserve near the Parliament of Victoria in Melbourne.