A complaint lodged with Victoria’s anti-corruption commission claims public funds in a $440 million rail project were misused.

On a desolate railway crossing at Cocamba in Victoria's north-west, a lonely stretch of steel track comes to an abrupt end.

"They've only just put the line through the crossings, and that's as far as it's gone," said Brian Barry, who farms grain near the township of Manangatang.

The section of standardised rail track was meant to connect hundreds of kilometres of track from the Manangatang line to the Port of Melbourne, linking the agricultural area to the south as part of a $440 million freight upgrade.