Great Western Railway, Queensland

The Great Western Railway was a railway development proposal involving a total of five new lines in western Queensland, Australia. Construction started in 1911 on sections of four of the lines, and three were opened in part before the project was effectively abandoned in 1920.

Following the separation of Queensland from New South Wales in 1859, Queensland consisted of a vast area with a non-indigenous population of ~30,000, most of who lived in the south east corner of the colony. The government was keen to facilitate development and immigration, and had approved the construction to the Main Line from Ipswich ~160 km to the fertile Darling Downs region in 1864. This was the first narrow gauge (1067mm or 3’6”) main line in the world.

For the next 46 years the Queensland government continued to give priority to railway construction projects that were seen as facilitating development and settlement at the expense of system connectivity. At one stage there were 11 separate railway systems in Queensland, and whilst coastal shipping provided adequate service in the absence of a continuous North Coast line, there was no easy equivalent for the interior, where the virtual absence of navigable rivers meant that bullock wagons and horse-drawn coaches were the only transport options before a railway was constructed.

By 1910 the benefits of a connected system were seen as worth realising, and the North Coast Line Act was passed authorising a line from Rockhampton to Cairns, which when completed in 1924 provided a 1681 km line linking Brisbane to all major coastal towns and cities on Queensland’s settled east coast.

On the same day the Queensland parliament also approved the Great Western Railway Act, authorising 2063 km of new lines in western Queensland. As John Kerr so succinctly put it, “…only 505km was built, and only 468km was opened...the project was designed to bring all country suitable for sheep grazing within economic distance, but it was ill conceived.”

The Act required all sections to be constructed more or less simultaneously, giving an indication of the political considerations of the day, where competing regions were vocal when perceiving that another had been advantaged by a government decision. It is likely that aspect explains why both Acts were approved on the same day.

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Wikipedia