Main Line railway, Queensland

The section of the line from the end of Murphys Creek railway station to the Ruthven Street overbridge, Harlaxton is listed on the Queensland Heritage Register.

As adequate river transport was already established between the capital Brisbane and the then separate settlement of Ipswich, the railway commenced from the latter locality and the initial section, built over relatively flat, easy country opened to Bigge's Camp, at the eastern base of the Little Liverpool Range, on 31 July 1865.

Built by the Queensland government to the unusual (for the time) gauge of 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm), the line largely followed the alignment surveyed by a private company, the Moreton Bay Tramway Company, which had proposed to build a 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge horse-drawn tramway but had been unable to raise funds to do so beyond an initial start on earthworks.

The adoption of narrow gauge was controversial at the time, and was largely predicated by the government's desire for the fastest possible construction timeframe at least cost.

Speed of construction (27 km between Grandchester and Gatton completed in 19 months) as well as cost were very important considerations to the Queensland Colony and in this instance future considerations were suppressed.It goes on to comment on the Main Range section that: the design of the route is further flawed in that it appears little effort was put into balancing cuts and fills so as to minimise the amount of earthworks/bridging.

While such balancing is not essential nor even cost effective (bearing in mind the problems in 1866 of transporting earth over longer distances) a review of Section 5 by William Mason (Acting Engineer-in-Chief of NSW Railways) in 1868 shows only one third of excavated material was used in embankments.

left hand side of a train traveling to Toowoomba) of the track which has largely removed the shallow cuttings and widened the low embankments so that today the appearance of the route is greatly changed from the original construction, to be more open and visible.

Comparatively speaking this section of railway may be likened to a goat track made to contour nearly every little spur and valley in the side of the range.

1995).In 2013 QR called tenders for the lowering of the 11 tunnel floors to enable 9 ft 6 in (2.9 m) ISO containers to be carried when the work is completed.

As part of that project the line west of Ipswich was realigned with a new bridge over the Bremer River at Wulkuraka opening on 26 April 1875.

Originally built as single track, the Roma St - Ipswich section was duplicated from 1885 to 1887, indicating how quickly the traffic volume grew on the line.

The line west of Ipswich was duplicated to Wulkuraka in 1902, to Grandchester in 1913 and from Yarongmalu (western end of the Victoria Tunnel) to Helidon in 1918.