Maryvale railway line
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The Maryvale railway line was a branch railway in the Southern Downs region of Queensland, Australia.
Maryvale Estate to the north east of Warwick was purchased by the government and subdivided into farms. A branch line to service the region was approved in 1908. Opened on 30 September 1911, the line branched from the Southern Line Southern main line at Killarney Junction (now named Mill Hill) and stretched about 30 kilometres to Maryvale via Womina, Sladevale, Campbell’s Plains, Freestone, Clintonvale and Gladfield.
The line was intended to be part of a via recta (Latin, "straight route") from Brisbane to Sydney. Prior to the completion of the New South Wales Government Railways North Coast Line in 1932, the only rail link from Brisbane to Sydney was via the break-of-gauge at Wallangarra on the state border, where the two states' railway systems met. The route from Brisbane to Wallangarra went west from Brisbane to Toowoomba then south to Wallangarra. The via recta was a putative short-cut south-west from Ipswich to Warwick, which would have shortened the distance from Brisbane to Sydney by between 92 km and 95 km.
The via recta would have consisted of the Maryvale branch from Warwick, the Mount Edwards branch from Ipswich, through Spicers Gap (just south of Cunninghams Gap) through the Great Dividing Range. The Warwick Argus reported that the citizens of Toowoomba were unhappy at the prospect of the via recta being built, as interstate traffic would bypass their town.
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