Rail transport in Queensland
[2] Construction of the Queensland rail network began in 1864 with the first section of the Main Line railway from Ipswich to Grandchester being built.
A prototype existed in Norway, but Queensland became the first rail operator in the world to adopt narrow gauge for a main line.[when?]
Standard gauge branch lines were later constructed in NSW with 5 chains (100.58 metres) radius curves and had the same low maximum speed.
[10][page needed] Thus the die was cast for a large narrow-gauge system, which was copied by three other Australian states as well as a number of other countries.
When opened in 1930, it was operationally a part of the New South Wales system and run by that government-owned railway, under agreement with Queensland which owned the line.
[12] In 2002, QR entered the standard-gauge market through subsidiary Interail, by 2004, it was running freight services from Brisbane through to Melbourne.
BHP Mitsubishi Alliance (BMA) is a 50/50 partnership between the two named companies, operating 9 coal mines in the Bowen Basin.
BMA Rail was authorised to operate on the Goonyella coal network from 1 January 2014, and purchased 13 Siemens E40 AG-V1 electric locomotives, designated as the BMACC class, numbered BMACC001-BMACC013.
The first recorded use of a locomotive hauled tramway for sugar cane transport in Queensland was at a plantation at Morayfield (now an outer suburb of Brisbane) in 1866 using 3 ft (914 mm) gauge.
[26] At the end of World War I surplus equipment that had been used to rail supplies to the trenches was used to expand the sugar cane networks.
When diesel locomotives were introduced, their increased utilisation rates enabled the size of a potential network to grow, resulting in the rationalisation of both the tramways and a reduction in the number of mills.
Today some of the ‘main lines’ of tramways are of a standard equivalent to a 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) gauge main line, with (in some cases) concrete sleepers, ballast and heavy rail allowing relatively high speed transport of the cane from further distances whilst still meeting the 12-hour ‘delivery from harvest’ timeframe.
Nambour, about 100 km north of Brisbane had a sugar tram network until 2003, when the mill closed due to plantations being sold for urban development reducing the district crop harvest to an unviable size.
Contemporary sugar cane tramways are quite advanced technically, utilising relatively heavy rails cascaded second hand from other operators, remote-controlled brake vans, concrete sleepers (in places), ballast and tamping machines.
In the 2020s, railway enthusiast volunteers are making efforts to preserve Queensland's sugar cane tramway history.
When a sugar mill closes, the owner or operator is often obliged to remove everything, and another difficulty is that tramway lines often run through privately owned farms.
Queensland's first premier passenger service was the Sydney Mail, introduced in 1888 when the New South Wales line opened to Wallangarra.
From 1923 it included a Parlour Car, which was transferred to the Townsville Mail in 1930 following the opening of the 1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in) standard gauge line to Brisbane from Sydney.
In 1935 the Sunshine Express was introduced on the Brisbane – Cairns service, being the first completely roller-bearing equipped train in Australia.
