broad gauge line between the Melbourne (or City) Terminus (on the site of modern-day Flinders Street station) and Sandridge (now Port Melbourne). It was constructed by the Melbourne and Hobson's Bay Railway Company and opened in September 1854. The first country line in Victoria was from Melbourne to Geelong, which was opened in 1857 by the Geelong and Melbourne Railway Company. In the early years, the lines were constructed by private companies. The suburban network expanded to the east from Princes Bridge to Richmond in 1859, then later to Brighton and Hawthorn by the early 1860s. The initial suburban lines were all built by different private companies centred on Flinders Street, which amalgamated into the Melbourne and Hobson's Bay United Railway Company by 1865; public ownership did not occur until 1878. In 1862, Victorian Railways lines had reached the great gold rush towns of Bendigo and Ballarat, and in 1864, railways were extended to the Murray River port of Echuca. In the 1870s, the Government Railway Department (Victorian Railways) started to build its own lines. In 1883, the first connection to another colony's rail system was made, when the Albury-Wodonga line was completed to join the New South Wales Government Railways network at Albury, requiring a break-of-gauge to New South Wales' (standard gauge). It was then followed in 1887 by a connection with the broad gauge South Australian Railways at Serviceton, with the Intercolonial Express (now The Overland) to Adelaide running between the capitals. Additional trunk lines were also built though the 1870s, with rails extended to Sale, Portland and Colac; and the first branch lines built. It was a time of improved train safety, with the first interlocking of railway signalling to protect trains provided in 1874, and tests of continuous train brakes carried out in 1884. In 1884, Colonial Parliament passed The Railway Construction Act, which authorised fifty-nine new lines to almost every corner of the colony, and thus became known as the Octopus Act. The proposed lines would serve both new agricultural towns and support suburban land speculation. It was also this decade that the first narrow gauge line was opened from Wangaratta to Whitfield, with three other lines following by 1910. The South Gippsland line was also opened from Dandenong to Leongatha by 1891. However, by the late 1890s, the majority of the colony was now covered in railways, with the exception of the Mallee country