Let’s explore the route of the old narrowgauge railway from Broken Hill in NSW to Port Pirie in South Australia.

If you’d like to see more videos about Gladstone, Peterborough, and Port Pirie here’s the links:
Peterborough to Quorn:    • Rails Around the Flinders Ranges  Pa...  
Gladstone to Wilmington:    • Gladstone to Wilmington Line  
Port Pirie:    • Port Pirie  One Town  Six Railway S...  

One of the things I do is follow abandoned railway lines all over South Australia. NSW and Victorian lines are also in the works.

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In 1875, the South Australian Railways built a narrowgauge line from Port Pirie to Gladstone. This was extended to Cockburn in 1888. It was around this time that the mining boom began in earnest in Broken Hill. Port Pirie is closer to Broken hill than Sydney but the NSW colonial government wouldn’t let the SA authorities to extend their line beyond the border, and they weren’t going to build a line there themselves. The solution to this was the Silverton Tramway Company which connected Broken Hill with the SAR at Cockburn.

The line was the busiest single track railway in the world between 1911 and 1914. In 1923 it was recorded that 102 trains passed in and out of the Peterborough station during a 24 hour period.

A new standard gauge line opened 1970 with parts of the line on a different alignment.

The Adelaide to Port Augusta line was converted to standard gauge in 1982 and the junction with the Broken Hill line was moved east to Crystal Brook.
The main traffic these days is freight between the east and west coast along with plenty of minerals and ore. The only passenger service is the Indian Pacific.

CREDITS:

Lionel Noble Collection: https://lionelnoble.com/
Denisbin on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/8213479...
Indian Pacific at Broken Hill Image by Rob Chandler https://www.flickr.com/photos/9614763...
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...