The Melbourne, Mount Alexander and Murray River Railway Company was a railway company in Victoria, Australia. It was established on 8 February 1853 to build a railway from Melbourne to Echuca on the Victorian-NSW border, as well as a branch railway to Williamstown, but struggled to make any progress. On 23 May 1856, the colonial Government took over the Company and it became part of the newly established Railway Department, which was part of the Board of Land and Works, and which in 1859 became Victorian Railways. British engineer George Christian Darbyshire was made the first Engineer-in-Chief for the Railways Department, and supervised the design and construction works until his replacement by Thomas Higginbotham in 1860.
Construction of the Bendigo line commenced in 1858, but this private consortium met with financial difficulties when it was unable to raise sufficient funds, and was bought out by the Victorian colonial government. The design work was then taken over by Captain Andrew Clarke, R. E., Surveyor-General of Victoria, with bridge designs completed by Bryson and O'Hara The contract for the first stage of the line from Footscray to Sandhurst (now Bendigo), was let to Cornish and Bruce for £3,356,937.2s.2d ($6.714 million) with work commencing on 1 June 1858. Completion of the permanent way was to be by 31 July 1861.
Clarke appointed William O’Hara to design bridges and viaducts, while William Edward Bryson stated to the Select Committee of the Legislative Assembly on Railway Contracts that he had designed most of the large bridges on the line. Clarke clearly influenced the design of the railway in setting the standards for the line. However, this was also a very costly undertaking, which stretched the colonial finances and this approach was later abandoned for more economic light lines in later Australian Railways. William Edward Bryson was described as a Civil Engineer in 1857 when he was a member of the Philosophical Institute of Victoria. He was also a member of the Royal Society of Victoria 1859-60 and employed at the "Government Railway Office". He published "Resources of Victoria & their development" in 1860 in the Royal Society’s Transactions.