Port Augusta railway station is a rail station located on the Adelaide-Port Augusta railway line in

Port Augusta Port Augusta is a small city in South Australia. Formerly a port, seaport, it is now a road traffic and Junction (rail), railway junction city mainly located on the east coast of the Spencer Gulf immediately south of the gulf's head and about ...

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories ...

History

In 1878, the first railway line in to Port Augusta was when it became the southern terminus of a proposed line to Darwin. Under South Australian ownership the narrow gauge railway, known as the Great Northern Railway, was extended in stages and reached

Oodnadatta Oodnadatta is a small, remote outback town and locality in the Australian state of South Australia, located north-north-west of the state capital of Adelaide by road or direct, at an altitude of . The unsealed Oodnadatta Track, an outback road ...

in 1891. In 1882, this line also connected Port Augusta to Adelaide when the

Peterborough–Quorn railway line The Peterborough–Quorn railway line was a railway line on the South Australian Railways network. Located in the upper Mid North of South Australia, it opened from Peterborough railway station, South Australia, Peterborough to Orroroo, South ...

was completed, as there was already railway from

Peterborough Peterborough () is a cathedral city in Cambridgeshire, east of England. It is the largest part of the City of Peterborough unitary authority district (which covers a larger area than Peterborough itself). It was part of Northamptonshire until ...

to Adelaide. The original Port Augusta railway station was on Commercial Road, and is now heritage listed and used as an art gallery. The railway continued through what later became railyards, through the original station, and down Commercial Road to the wharf area. The

South Australian Government The Government of South Australia, also referred to as the South Australian Government, SA Government or more formally, His Majesty’s Government, is the Australian state democratic administrative authority of South Australia. It is modelled o ...

subsequently made offers to several syndicates to construct a line north from Oodnadatta to Pine Creek on the land grant system, however negotiations were unsuccessful and Oodnadatta remained the railhead. The line passed to Commonwealth ownership on 1 January 1911, but continued to be operated by the

South Australian Railways South Australian Railways (SAR) was the statutory corporation through which the Government of South Australia built and operated railways in South Australia from 1854 until March 1978, when its non-urban railways were incorporated into Austr ...

until the

Commonwealth Railways The Commonwealth Railways were established in 1917 by the Government of Australia with the Commonwealth Railways Act to administer the Trans-Australia and Port Augusta to Darwin railways. It was absorbed into Australian National in 1975. O ...

took over operations on 1 January 1926. An extension of the railway to

Alice Springs Alice Springs ( aer, Mparntwe) is the third-largest town in the Northern Territory of Australia. Known as Stuart until 31 August 1933, the name Alice Springs was given by surveyor William Whitfield Mills after Alice, Lady Todd (''née'' Al ...

was completed in 1929. Between 1913 and 1917, the standard gauge

Trans-Australian Railway The Trans-Australian Railway, opened in 1917, runs from Port Augusta in South Australia to Kalgoorlie in Western Australia, crossing the Nullarbor Plain in the process. As the only rail freight corridor between Western Australia and the easter ...

was built from Port Augusta to

Kalgoorlie Kalgoorlie is a city in the Goldfields–Esperance region of Western Australia, located east-northeast of Perth at the end of the Great Eastern Highway. It is sometimes referred to as Kalgoorlie–Boulder, as the surrounding urban area includ ...

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

, entering the town from another direction and the station from the other end. Thus Port Augusta became a

break of gauge With railways, a break of gauge occurs where a line of one track gauge (the distance between the rails, or between the wheels of trains designed to run on those rails) meets a line of a different gauge. Trains and rolling stock generally cannot ...

station until the standard gauge line was extended to Port Pirie Junction in 1937. The new station provided for transfer of passenger and goods between trains on the standard gauge line to

and the narrow gauge line to Oodnadatta and Adelaide (via Peterborough, and another break of gauge at Terowie). The new two-storey station building was and provided platform for standard gauge trains and platform for narrow gauge trains. In 1957, a new standard gauge Stirling North to Marree line was built via Leigh Creek, replacing the line via

Quorn Quorn is a brand of meat substitute products, or the company that makes them. Quorn originated in the UK and is sold primarily in Europe, but is available in 14 countries. The brand is owned by parent company Monde Nissin. Quorn is sold as b ...

. In 1972, the Whyalla line opened to

Whyalla Whyalla was founded as "Hummocks Hill", and was known by that name until 1916. It is the fourth most populous city in the Australian state of South Australia after Adelaide, Mount Gambier and Gawler and along with Port Pirie and Port Augusta ...

to serve

Whyalla Steelworks The Whyalla Steelworks is a fully integrated steelworks and the only manufacturer of rail in Australia. Iron ore is mined in the Middleback Range to feed the steelworks, resulting in the distribution of finished steel products of over 90 different ...

. In 2001, the narrow gauge line between Port Augusta and Quorn was re-opened by the Pichi Richi Railway Preservation Society. Port Augusta has long been an important railway centre, with

Downer Rail Downer Rail is a business unit within the Downer Group. As well as manufacturing and maintaining railway rolling stock it holds maintenance contracts to maintain rail infrastructure. The head office is located in North Ryde. History The E ...

having a plant in the city.

Journey Beyond Journey Beyond is the business name (together with more than a dozen other related names) of Experience Australia Group Pty Ltd, a private equity-owned company known mainly for operating Australian interstate experiential tourism trains (''The ...

's ''

The Ghan ''The Ghan'' is an experiential tourism oriented passenger train service that operates between the northern and southern coasts of Australia, through the cities of Adelaide, Alice Springs and Darwin on the Adelaide–Darwin rail corridor. O ...

'' and ''

Indian Pacific The ''Indian Pacific'' is a weekly experiential tourism passenger train service that runs in Australia's east–west rail corridor between Sydney, on the shore of the Pacific Ocean, and Perth, on the shore of the Indian Ocean – thus, like ...

'' services pass Port Augusta on the Adelaide-Port Augusta railway line but do not stop at the station.

References

External links

{{commonscat-inline
Flickr gallery
Railway stations in South Australia South Australian Heritage Register Port Augusta