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RAIL and heritage campaigners have welcomed new plans by the City of Ballarat to restore the historic Ballarat B railway signal box on Lydiard Street.

At tonight’s meeting, councillors will be asked to approve $30,000 in refurbishment works including repainting the box in a heritage colour scheme and installing new vandal-proof reinforced windows.

Owned by rail authority VicTrack, most of the building’s windows have been broken in recent years and it has graffiti on its weatherboard sides.

The proposed work is part of $520,000 in activity being considered for the CBD and follows the destruction of an 1880s signal box in Soldiers Hill in April during a suspicious fire. Arsonists are thought to have targeted the derelict graffiti-covered C Box at the Macarthur Street railway crossing, and fire crews were unable to save it.

Long-time advocate for Ballarat’s rail history Hedley Thomson said Signal Box B was an important community asset, and he encouraged councillors to “kick on”.

“What I would really like to see is that it is part of a total look at the whole rail precinct here in Ballarat,” he said.

“If council really wants to do a good job in fixing up the signal box, it really needs to have a purpose behind it. Money has been spent in the past but these assets haven’t been well looked after or well used.”

Mr Thomson said the rail historical society worked to save the Ballarat A signal box, at the eastern end of the railway yards, from destruction but the City of Ballarat, the Victorian government and the wider Ballarat community must act now.

“We put together a major project some years ago, but that report was never taken forward so now seems a good opportunity to take that up again to utilise these places and learn what they once meant.”

He said operating machinery installed in 1885 had already been destroyed inside the signal box, despite its heritage listing.

“These boxes and a lot of aspects of our rail heritage really tell the story of how Ballarat developed over many years and the important role our city played in Victoria’s development,” he said.

“Some of this has now been forgotten — really badly forgotten — and I think this is an opportunity to enliven them and think about why we want to keep them at all.

Mr Thomson echoed suggestions from Ballarat historian and heritage campaigner Anne Beggs-Sunter for the development of a railway and transport museum in the precinct.

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