The Eyre Peninsula Railway is a gauge railway on the Eyre Peninsula of South Australia. Radiating out from the ports at Port Lincoln and Thevenard, it is isolated from the rest of the South Australian railway network. It peaked at 777 kilometres in 1950; today only a 60 kilometre section remains open. It is currently operated by Aurizon.
History
The Eyre Peninsula Railway was built and operated by South Australian Railways (SAR). As with many other early narrow-gauge railways in South Australia, the Eyre Peninsula lines started out as isolated lines connecting small ports to the inland, opening up the country for settlement and economic life including export of grain and other produce in an environment with few roads and only horse-drawn road vehicles. The railway has always been isolated from the main network. A proposal to link it with the rest of the network at Port Augusta was rejected in the 1920s and again in the 1950s.
The first 67 km from Port Lincoln to Cummins opened on 18 November 1907, followed by extensions to Yeelanna on 1 April 1909, Minnipa on 5 May 1913, Nunjikompita on 14 August 1914 and Thevenard on 8 February 1915, a total of 434 km. A second line opened from Cummins to Moody on 1 August 1912, being extended to Ungarra on 31 March 1913, Kimba on 11 July 1913 and Buckleboo on 5 August 1926, a distance of 213 km.
Branch lines off the original line opened from Yeelanna to Mount Hope on 9 October 1914, a distance of 38 km and from Wandana to Penong on 7 February 1924, a distance of 83 km. A further nine-kilometre branch from Kevin to Kowulka opened on 11 April 1950. This was the peak of the network's size at 777 km.
The Mount Hope line was truncated by 15 km on 12 July 1965, with Kapinnie becoming its terminus. The remaining section closed in October 2002.
The original route for gypsum traffic had followed a circuitous, route, via Kowulka and Wandana, from the mine at Kevin to the port at Thevenard. The ruling grade was 1 in 80. In 1966, a line with a ruling grade of 1 in 120 was opened from Kevin to Penong Junction. The line from Wandana to Kowulka was closed. In 1984 the Thevenard unloading facility was upgraded with a balloon loop.
The Eyre Peninsula Railway was included in the March 1978 takeover of SAR by Australian National Railways Commission and the November 1997 sale of Australian National's South Australian freight business to Genesee & Wyoming, which included a 50-year lease on the rail network from the state government until 2047.
The last grain train from Kevin to Penong operated on 3 March 1997 with the line reverting to state government ownership on 30 June 2001. Due to a poor harvest resulting from drought, the last grain train north of Cummins to Kimba ran on 20 December 2018.
Cessation of grain traffic
Grain trains ceased operating in May 2019, when Viterra moved its business to road haulage, leaving only gypsum traffic on the Lake MacDonnell–Thevenard railway line remaining. The network technically remains open as no lines have formally been "closed". However, from an operational standpoint, the lines are closed. Since April 2005, grain trains had only operated from Port Lincoln to Wudinna and Kimba. The workshops in Port Lincoln initially remained open for maintenance of rail vehicles brought by road from Whyalla and Thevenard, but the workshops subsequently closed and some mechanical equipment was transferred to Adelaide for use at the Motive Power Centre at Dry Creek. Maintenance is now carried out at Progress Rail's Port Augusta workshops; rolling stock is transferred there via road.
The Wudinna to Penong Junction section remained open to facilitate rolling stock movements to and from the Port Lincoln workshops. Gypsum trains continue to operate from the Lake MacDonnell mine at Kevin to Thevenard for Gypsum Resources Australia, a joint venture between Boral and CSR. A final light engine movement from Port Lincoln to Thevenard ran on 26 June 2019.
Operation of the Eyre Peninsula Railway was acquired by Aurizon in their purchase of One Rail Australia (previously Genesee & Wyoming Australia); the sale was finalised on 29 July 2022.