About Queensland's Railways

About Queensland and its railways. Queensland (highlighted in red on the Australian map shown), is often referred to as Australia's "Sunshine State", is Australia's second largest state and takes up the whole North-Eastern quarter of the Australian continent. With half the state North of the Tropic of Capricorn, summers are usually very hot, wet and humid along the coast. However, inland to the West of the Great Dividing Range the extensive and arid interior can see many years pass between rainfalls! With over 7,400 km of coast line and an area of 1,722,000 km2 Queensland is vast! Being the most decentralised of the Australian states it has a relatively small population of just over 3 million people. Half this population is scattered, mainly along the East coast, in many small towns and cities of various sizes with the other half living in the South-East corner of the state where the capital city of Queensland, Brisbane, is located. It was just to the South-West of Brisbane in the industrial city of Ipswich, once known for its, coal mines, woollen mills and extensive railway workshops, that the story of Queensland's Railways began. It was from Ipswich, on the 31st July 1865, that Queensland's first railway line was completed to Bigges Camp, now known as Grandchester, a still tiny township a mere 38km to the west of Ipswich. Within two years, the line had been extended further West, up The Great Dividing Range to Toowoomba, capital of the rich Darling Downs agricultural region. Once ridiculed by its neighbouring states to the South, running standard and broad gauge line, presently, the still state owned Queensland Railways running 3' 6" (1067mm) narrow gauge line has easily by far the largest rail network in Australia! According to QR's 2006/2007 Annual Report QR's network throughout Queensland consisted of 9521km of 3' 6" (1067mm) gauge track, 98kms of Standard gauge track (the Queensland section of the Brisbane-Sydney line) and 36kms of dual gauge track. QR's 2006/2007 Annual Report also stated that it hauled, taking into account its new interstate operations, 238 million tonnes of freight nationally, the largest single haulauge by a company or organisation in the history or Australian railways. Coal haulauge accounted for around 176 million tonnes while other minerals and general freight accounted for 60.58 million tonnes. Total passengers carried by QR Citytrain (Brisbane's suburban network) and Traveltrain came in at 58,776,00 compared to 54,100,00 in 2005/2006. QR operated 673 locomotives, 7403 coal wagons, 6695 mineral and freight wagons, 686 passenger vehicles and 780 service vehicles. The average number of staff employed throughout the year was 14,602. These days, though QR and its subisidary companies is still by the far the biggest operator in the state, Pacific National also runs intermodal freight trains on the Queensland narrow gauge network and the Airtrain line to Brisbane Airport is a private concern running QR owned suburban units. There are also a number of heritage railways, locos and museums throughout the state run by various organisations promoting the rich heritage of railways in Queensland.

This page copyright Colin Power © 2008. Queensland. Australia.