History
For more details on this topic, see Rail transport in Queensland.The line opened on 3 September 1882 to Pinkenba railway station. During World War I and World War II, with deep berthing available to ships at Pinkenba on the mouth of the Brisbane River, troops camped in the Pinkenba and Meeandah localities. Passenger ships used the Pinkenba wharf, and special trains ran from Brisbane to Pinkenba.
The line was electrified in 1988, but only until a number of metres past Eagle Farm, the next station after current suburban terminus Doomben; only diesel-hauled services could travel the full length of the line, and those were infrequent. All passenger services on the line were suspended in September 1993 by a Goss Labor Party government as part of a state-wide rationalisation of the rail network with the closing or suspending of under-utilised or unprofitable rail lines. Only a few special services were run on the line on days of major race events at adjoining race tracks.
Electric passenger services resumed on 27 January 1998 under a Borbidge National Party government, but only as far as Doomben, with bus connections to the other abandoned stations.
The Doomben to Pinkenba section is used only for freight and occasional special trains, such as heritage services described below.
Read more about this topic: Doomben Railway Line
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Revolutions are the periods of history when individuals count most.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only the history of pinheads.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)