The Broken Hill railway line is now part of the transcontinental railway from Sydney to Perth.
New South Wales's first line opened from Sydney to Parramatta Junction (near Granville Station) in 1855 and was extended as the Main Western line in stages to Orange in 1877. The Broken Hill line branched off the Main Western line at Orange and was opened to Molong in 1885. It was extended to Parkes and Forbes in 1893. This line was extended from Parkes to Bogan Gate and Condobolin in 1898 and Roto and Trida in 1919.
An isolated section of standard gauge line was also opened from Menindee to Broken Hill in 1919, which met the 1,067-millimetre (42.0 in) gauge Silverton Tramway at a break-of-gauge. At Cockburn, South Australia, the Silverton Tramway connected with the South Australian Railways system to Port Pirie and via a break of gauge at Terowie to Adelaide. The final missing link between Trida and Menindee was completed in 1927. The Broken Hill Express, running from Sydney to Broken Hill, was introduced from November 1927. Included in its composition was Dining Car AB90, making it the first regularly scheduled Dining Car in that state. In 1969, the Broken Hill - Port Pirie line was standardised, completing the Sydney–Perth standard gauge link.
Read more about Broken Hill Railway Line: Branch Line, Crossing Loops
Famous quotes containing the words broken, hill, railway and/or line:
“The years like great black oxen tread the world,
And God the herdsman treads them on behind,
And I am broken by their passing feet.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Let go thy hold when a great wheel runs down a hill lest it break thy neck with following; but the great one that goes upward, let him draw thee after.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. Pancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand—my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm’s length.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“I said: “A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)