About 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. History 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 mainline, 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. Locomotive that could come with the route. some of the locomotives are the Queensland Beyer-Garratt class, Queensland BB18¼ class locomotive and Queensland C19 class locomotive Queensland Beyer-Garratt class Built: 1950-1951 Total Produced: 30 configuration: 4-8-2+2-8-4 Queensland BB18¼ class locomotive Built: 1950-1958 Total Produced: 55 configuration: 4-6-2 Queensland C19 class locomotive Built: 1922-1935 Total Produced: 26 configuration: 4-8-0
Brilliant proposal! Certainly the unique factor of major main line traffic and heavy haulage on a narrow gauge steam line is bound to pique a lot of people interest! A lot of old QR trains are preserved as well which is definitely a good thing. I've added your thread to the master post of detailed Australian route proposals threads found here: https://forums.dovetailgames.com/th...o-the-land-down-under.2393/page-2#post-231270