page_title: Eyre Peninsula Railway
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Eyre Peninsula Railway / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of the railways of Eyre Peninsula, South Australia, in 2019 (including closed lines). This is an update of Map of Eyre Peninsula railway lines in 2017.png following the permanent cessation of wheat haulage from 1 June 2019.
context_page_description: The Eyre Peninsula Railway is a 1,067 mm gauge railway on the Eyre Peninsula of South Australia. Radiating out from the ports at Port Lincoln and Thevenard, it is isolated from the rest of the South Australian railway network. Peaking at 777 kilometres in 1950, today only one 60 kilometre section remains open. It is operated by One Rail Australia.
context_section_description: The Eyre Peninsula Railway was built and operated by the South Australian Railways (SAR). As with many other early narrow-gauge railways in South Australia, the Eyre Peninsula lines started out as isolated lines connecting small ports to the inland, opening up the country for settlement and economic life including export of grain and other produce in an environment with few roads and only horse-drawn road vehicles. The railway has always been isolated from the main network. A proposal to link it with the rest of the network at Port Augusta was rejected in the 1920s and again in the 1950s.
  The first 67 kilometres from Port Lincoln to Cummins opened on 18 November 1907, followed by extensions to Yeelanna on 1 April 1909, Minnipa on 5 May 1913, Nunjikompita on 14 August 1914 and Thevenard on 8 February 1915, a total of 434 kilometres. A second line opened from Cummins to Moody on 1 August 1912, being extended to Ungarra on 31 March 1913, Kimba on 11 July 1913 and Buckleboo on 5 August 1926, a distance of 213 kilometres.
  Branch lines off the original line opened from Yeelanna to Mount Hope on 9 October 1914, a distance of 38 kilometres and from Wandana to Penong on 7 February 1924, a distance of 83 kilometres. A further nine kilometre branch from Kevin to Kowulka opened on 11 April 1950. This was the peak of the network's size at 777 kilometres.
  The Mount Hope line was truncated by 15 kilometres on 12 July 1965, with Kapinnie becoming its terminus. The remaining section closed in October 2002.
  With gypsum having to hauled by a circuitous route from Kevin to Thevanard via Kowulka and Wandana over 103 kilometres with a ruling grade of 1 in 80, in August 1964 construction began on a 58 kilometres line from Kevin to Penong Junction with a ruling 1 in 120 grade. It opened on 13 February 1966 with the Wandana to Kowulka line closed. In 1984 the Thevernard unloading facility was upgraded with a balloon loop built.
  The Eyre Peninsula Railway was included in the March 1978 takeover of the SAR by Australian National and the November 1997 sale of Australian National's South Australian freight business to Genesee & Wyoming which included a 50-year lease on the rail network from the state government until 2047.
  The last grain train from Kevin to Penong operated on 3 March 1997 with the line reverting to state government ownership on 30 June 2001. Due to a poor harvest resulting from drought, the last grain train north of Cummins to Kimba ran on 20 December 2018.
  Grain trains ceased operating in May 2019, with Viterra moving its business to road haulage with much of the network closed. The network technically remains open as no lines have formally been 'closed'. However from an operational standpoint, the lines are closed. Since April 2005, grain trains had only operated from Port Lincoln to Wudinna and Kimba. The workshops in Port Lincoln remain open for ongoing railway wagon maintenance brought in by road from Whyalla and Thevenard. 
  The Wudinna to Penong Junction section remained open to facilitate rolling stock movements to and from the Port Lincoln workshops. Gypsum trains continue to operate from the Lake MacDonnell mine at Kevin to Thevenard for Gypsum Resources Australia, a joint venture between Boral and CSR. A final light engine movement from Port Lincoln to Thevenard ran on 26 June 2019.
  Since 2020 Genesee & Wyoming's successor as operator of the South Australian lines has been One Rail Australia.
caption: Map of operational and closed railway lines of Eyre Peninsula in 2019
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