140 years of rail in Maryborough

AT 11AM on June 26, a shipment of gold will be made from the Maryborough Railway Station to Macalister Station where it will be meet by local constables and unloaded for safe storage at the Bond Store.

It’s part of a re-enactment celebrating the 140th birthday of the opening of the railway line in Maryborough, and a feature of STEAMfesta 2021.

Macalister Station is the train stop for the Mary Ann, the working replica of the first steam engine built in Queensland in 1873 at John Walker & Co’s Union Foundry.

The railway line, which also runs through Queens Park, was used to transport timber, sugar and heavy engineering from the factories along the river.

The Maryborough railway had its beginning as a result of the discovery of gold at Gympie in 1867.

Both Brisbane and Maryborough had fought a long and protracted battle to be the major port for Gympie and its gold, but Maryborough won out. The line from Maryborough to Gympie was approved by Parliament on 7 August 1877, some ten years after James Nash’s discovery of gold.

Construction started on 23 March 1878, with the local firm of J T Annear & Company taking on construction.

The railway between Maryborough and Gympie was opened throughout on 6 August 1881.

A daily service was provided between Maryborough and Gympie, taking some four hours between Maryborough and Gympie.

Other railway lines would transform Maryborough into an important railway centre. In 1891 the link between Brisbane and Gympie was finally completed.

The Maryborough railway district eventually served an area that extended to Gympie, Nanango, Tarong, Kingaroy, Proston, Windera, and Gayndah, Mundubbera and Monto.

Maryborough supported its own locomotive and carriage workshops, and maintained its own separate ‘railway identity’ in many ways.

Passenger trains would be shunted into and out of the station at different times of the day, or night, and its Refreshment Rooms were some of the busiest on the North Coast Line.

The stations at Pialba and Urangan were to become popular destinations for the annual railway picnics, and other seaside specials organised by the Railways.

The first rail lines in Queensland linked farming and mining areas with coastal ports.

In the case of Maryborough, it was the lure of gold that originally drove the railway onwards.

However, it went on to become a major industrial centre for Queensland and Australia.

About the time of the Gympie gold rush, the sugar industry expanded around Maryborough, and a large timber mill opened. John Walker of Ballarat, Victoria, opened a branch engineering works, capitalising on his experience with mining contracts, for the Gympie mines.

John Walker’s Union Foundry (later known as Walkers Limited), pushed for the chance to build locomotives, right at the beginning of the railway construction works in Maryborough.

However, Walkers had to wait until 1897, for the first government contract.

Walkers Ltd constructed some 449 steam locomotives from 1897, until the last one BB18¼ 1089 entered service in 1958 for the Queensland Railways, but also built others for the different state and commonwealth railway systems.

Whilst shipbuilding finished in the 1970s modern railway rollingstock construction continued, for local, national and overseas markets.

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STEAMfesta is on 26 June 2021 from 11am to 4pm at Queens Park and the Portside Precinct.

More info on page 12.