How the railway was built up the Brisbane Valley, and how it became a trail

The line, stretch by stretch

The line was not built for passengers first. TMR’s account of it describes a branch off the Brisbane to Toowoomba railway, pushed into the Brisbane River Valley to reach its timber; the brochure for the Fernvale to Lowood section adds what it carried: supplies up to the growing number of small farms in the valley, and milk products, timber and stock back down to the Brisbane markets. From the 1890s to the 1950s tonnes of local produce left by train every day. Late in its life the same line carried the materials and equipment for the building of Somerset Dam, 1935 to 1959, which the register records as a new prosperity for it.

These are the openings the official records carry, each date with the record that states it:

Read up the valley, the years step in that order: 1884, 1886, 1904, 1910, 1911, 1913. One approval sits between the steps: the extension to Blackbutt, approved in 1908 with work beginning that year. And TMR’s brochure gives the final section, to Yarraman, 76 years of service, from its opening in May 1913 to the line’s closure in 1989.

Years between the stretches

The longest wait on the line, on the Queensland Heritage Register's dates, sits at the middle of the valley. Seventeen and a half years separate the opening to Esk on 9 August 1886 from the line reaching Toogoolawah on 8 February 1904, worked from the two stored dates: the longest gap between any two openings. The pauses either side of it are much shorter. Just over two years pass between the first section in June 1884 and Esk in August 1886; six pass between Yimbun in September 1904 and Linville in 1910; and then the climb onto the range comes quickly, one year to Blackbutt and Benarkin in 1911, two more to Yarraman in May 1913.

The long wait had a reason in the record: the valley was being subdivided for dairying while the line stood still at Esk. The register’s Cressbrook Homestead entry counts about thirty farms carved from the Cressbrook run by 1910, supplying the condensed milk factory built in the late 1890s; and its Inverness entry records the factory’s owner, James McConnel, joining local deputations to press for the railway to be extended from Esk to Cressbrook. The drawing marks the extension to Toogoolawah in 1904.

Closing the line

Two official accounts of the end disagree, and this guide prints both rather than choosing. TMR’s brochures and its brochure map give the first: the last rail motor service on the line ran in 1989, with the railway closed later that year. The Queensland Heritage Register gives the second and later date: its Lockyer Creek Railway Bridge entry records the railway closing for traffic in March 1993, and its Yimbun Railway Tunnel entry says the line closed in 1993.

TMR holds a 1993 date as well, for a different event: removal of the rail line commenced in 1993, with many station buildings taken away, reused on other lines or sold. Six station buildings stayed in their own districts: Yarraman, Linville, Toogoolawah, Esk, Coominya and Lowood.

Read together, the record gives two dates for the end of the line, 1989 and 1993, as set out above. The dates all belong to Queensland Government pages; none of them is this guide’s own. The dates all belong to Queensland Government pages; none of them is this guide’s own.

From line to trail

The corridor’s second life has its own pair of dates, and they sit a year apart in the telling. TMR’s Fernvale to Lowood brochure dates that first section of trail opening to December 2002; TMR’s brochure map dates the same opening to 2003. Both are the department’s own pages, and both dates are printed here.

The last gap closed in 2018. TMR’s account of the trail records the final link between Toogoolawah and Moore as completed in 2018; the ministerial statement of 7 August 2018 announced the finished trail, with $1.8 million from the Queensland Government towards the final link, works that began in 2017, and a total project cost of $3.354 million once federal and council contributions are counted.

Those are the openings the official pages date: a first section in the south, and the final link that joined the line end to end. The statement counts the joined trail at 161 kilometres, and lists the towns it links, from Wulkuraka to Yarraman.