After our interesting sojourn at Terowie we got back in the car and headed off to Broken Hill where we can add a final piece into the railway puzzle. You may remember Silverton the almost ghost town that we visited early in our trip. When silver was found in Silverton it needed a means to get the ore to market and rail was the answer. Now Silverton, while being in NSW, is much closer to South Australia so it made sense to send it that direction. The South Australian government wanted to extend their railway to Silverton but NSW would not allow it. The solution was to put in place a private railway company to construct the line from Silverton the South Australian border but it could not be called a railway because railways could only be operated by government – it was therefore named the Silverton Tramway company.
With the discovery of ore at Broken Hill the line extended to there too. The image is of the old Silverton Tramway station in Broken Hill, now a museum.
Some really interesting pieces of history. There certainly was a lot of wheeling and dealing back then!
ReplyDeleteHi Winam, Still goes on today .. how about the Paramatta-Chatswood rail link ... or the very fast train!
ReplyDeleteAh, politics, politics! Nothing's really changed, has it?!?!
ReplyDeleteHappy travels!!
The railing is fantastic! Beautiful building.
ReplyDeletePosterity has been poorly served by our early settlers, locking us into a constitution designed to preserve the power of petty states.
ReplyDeleteYes we could do away with the states.
ReplyDelete