page_title: Main Line railway, Queensland
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Main Line railway, Queensland / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Locomotive near Harlaxton on the Toowoomba Range, 1914. The 'Sydney Mail' near Harlaxton on the Toowoomba Range. The Locomotive 612 was built in the Ipswich Railway Workshops in 1911 and was written off in 1956. (Description supplied with photograph).
context_page_description: The Main Line is a railway line in South East Queensland, Australia. It was opened in a series of sections between 1865 and 1867. It commences at Roma St Station in Brisbane and extends west 161 km to Toowoomba. It is the first narrow gauge main line constructed in the world. The section of the line from the end of Murphys Creek railway station to the Ruthven Street overbridge, Harlaxton is listed on the Queensland Heritage Register. The Murphys Creek Railway Complex, the Lockyer Creek Railway Bridge, the Lockyer Creek Railway Bridge and Swansons Rail Bridge are also heritage listed.
context_section_description: The 31 km (19 mi) section from Ipswich (a city about 38 km or 24 mi from Brisbane) to Grandchester (originally Bigge’s Camp) was the first section of railway line opened in Queensland, on 31 July 1865.
  Queensland Railways (QR) was the first operator in the world to adopt narrow gauge (in this case 3 ft 6 in or 1,067 mm) for a main line, and this remains the system wide gauge within Queensland today.
  The colony of Queensland separated from New South Wales in 1859, and the new government was keen to facilitate development and immigration. Improved transport to the fertile Darling Downs region situated west of Toowoomba was seen as a priority. As adequate river transport was already established between the capital Brisbane and the then separate settlement of Ipswich, the railway commenced from the latter locality and the initial section, built over relatively flat, easy country opened to Bigge’s Camp, at the eastern base of the Little Liverpool Range, on 31 July 1865. Called the Main Line, the only significant engineering work was the bridge over the Bremer River to North Ipswich.
  Built by the Queensland government to the unusual (for the time) gauge of 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm), the line largely followed the alignment surveyed by a private company, the Moreton Bay Tramway Company, which had proposed to build a 4 ft 8 ¹⁄₂ in (1,435 mm) standard gauge horse-drawn tramway but had been unable to raise funds to do so beyond an initial start on earthworks.
  The adoption of narrow gauge was controversial at the time, and was largely predicated by the government’s desire for the fastest possible construction timeframe at least cost. This resulted in adoption of sharper curves and a lower axle load than was considered possible using standard gauge, and an assessment at the time put the cost of a narrow gauge line from Ipswich to Toowoomba as 25% of the cost of a standard gauge line. In a colony with a non-indigenous population of ~30,000 when the decision was made, it is understandable.
caption: Train climbing the Main Line near Harlaxton, 1914
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