page_title: Railway stations on the Eyre Peninsula
section_title: Station infrastructure
hierarchical_section_title: Railway stations on the Eyre Peninsula / Station infrastructure
caption_attribution_description: English: At Ucolta station (9 km east of Peterborough, South Australia on the then narrow-gauge (1067 mm) route to Broken Hill), bagged grain is in three loaded 4-wheel railway wagons on a siding and a fourth wagon is being loaded; a fifth further on is empty. Bagged grain is also on the adjacent platform. A 'Ucolta' sign and a small weatherboard station building are on the far side of three other railway lines.
context_page_description: Few of them were staffed. All stations were closed in 1968 when the SAR withdrew all passenger services.
context_section_description: At the time the first railway lines were being constructed, from 1907, it was impossible to predict which vicinity would grow and which would not. As a result of lines arriving first and townships being surveyed around them, throughout the peninsula there is a distinct uniformity to the arrangement of railway lines relative to the townships which adjoin them; in most cases the design far exceeded what would be needed.
  Routes remained substantially unchanged after 1926. However, many additional sidings were subsequently opened and station yards expanded; and in later years many sidings closed and significant infrastructure and industry changes directly affected the railway. Government policy was to provide sidings at about 8 km (5 mi) intervals along all railways in wheat-growing areas. Surveys for new lines made provision for such sidings, with land reserved at appropriate locations, but some were not built and remained simply as aberrations in the boundaries of railway land. Subsequent extensions were often at about 10 km (6 mi) intervals until mass siding closures occurred from the mid-1980s, when about 24 km (15 mi) became the norm.
  The most common arrangement for sidings was a single passing siding. Facilities generally consisted of little more than a corrugated iron shelter, a nameboard and (not always) an earth-built goods loading ramp. Occasionally a hand-operated crane could be found. Larger stations rated a timber station building, and a few had a corrugated iron goods shed. Watering facilities bore little relationship to the importance of the siding; rather, they reflected the necessity for water at regular intervals along the line. Multiple water tanks and huge catchment roofs were often the major fixed infrastructure at otherwise minor localities. 
  Shelters were for passengers and "take-out" items that ranged from parcels to large consignments (less-than-car load). After general freight services ceased and unit train working was introduced, in the early 1980s, a major program of siding extensions took place, during which the shelters were removed, leaving only a sign on a post visible to locomotive crews.
  No station has been open on Eyre Peninsula since passenger services ceased on 30 August 1968. Buildings on wheat-traffic lines outside of Port Lincoln that had been used by Genesee & Wyoming Australia (GWA), such as employee sleeping barracks, were vacated when the company ceased operating bulk-wheat unit trains in May 2019. 
  No stations exist on the only operating remnant of the narrow-gauge system on the peninsula – the 67 km (42 mi) line from the gypsum mine at the uninhabited locality of  Kevin, by Lake MacDonnell, to the port of Thevenard However, the timber building that served as the SAR's Thevenard station before 1968 remains in use by GWA as an office.
caption: A small unstaffed rural station on an SAR narrow-gauge line like the vast majority of those on Eyre Peninsula, in the early 1950s before bulk grain handling was introduced. This station building was more substantial than the customary simple corrugated iron shelter shed.
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