The line was built as 1,600 mm (5 ft 3 in) (broad gauge) from Ararat to Maroona, Hamilton, Heywood and Portland, and opened in 1877.

[3] Pacific National closed their Portland operations in March 2008, with GrainCorp leasing a limited number of locomotives and rolling stock from them, but favour transporting grain to the Port of Geelong instead.

[4] In July 2008, the Victorian Government announced a $15 million upgrade to the line, raising maximum speeds to 80 kilometres an hour as they were previously.

[8] In March 2010, the State Government announced a $3.97 million grant for the construction of a rail loading facility alongside the Iluka Resources mineral sand separation plant near the Hamilton railway station for the rail transport of heavy mineral concentrate extracted from the Iluka mine site at Ouyen via the standard gauge Murtoa - Hopetoun railway.

[9] Grain trains on the line restarted with the 2010 harvest, with AWB Limited and its rail partner El Zorro using the GrainCorp terminal to load 26,250 tonnes of canola bound for Pakistan on 4 March 2010.

Prior to that, the only regular service on the line was the thrice weekly El Zorro containerised mineral sands train from Portland.