Kuranda Scenic Railway history, the route and its stops

The Kuranda Scenic Railway was never meant to be a tourist attraction. The Kuranda village visitor site explains that the mining population at Herberton was growing and supplies had to travel to and from the coast, so a railway route was planned.¹ The line was a freight and passenger lifeline between the coastal plain at Cairns and the tableland behind the range.

Engineers Australia, which lists the railway on its engineering heritage register, says the line opened up mining and farming country in Far North Queensland, and that it was designed and supervised for the Queensland Government Railways by the engineers Willoughby Hannam and T H Annett.⁷ The register records the building as work by the contractor John Robb and his migrant workforce between 1886 and 1891.³

Two sources, two start dates. The Kuranda village site says building from Cairns ran for several years from 1887 and reached Kuranda in 1891, while Engineers Australia dates the building to between 1886 and 1891.^2,3 Neither page explains the difference, and we do not guess; both agree on the end date of 1891.

The railway opened quietly. The State Library of Queensland quotes the Cairns Post of 27 June 1891, which reported that the line had opened on the previous Thursday with no ceremony at all, and that locals could be forgiven some disappointment at the lack of fuss.⁸ The newspaper had expected a public holiday and excursion fares to mark an important epoch for Cairns.

Skyrail writes that the railway has been in operation since 1891, and the Kuranda village site says the line from Cairns reached Kuranda that year.^20,2 A line that has run since then has become part of the landscape of the range, and the timetable and the carriages are the living part of that history, so a ride is a way of reading it.

Even the station has a date. The Kuranda village site states that the historic Kuranda Railway Station was built in 1915, after the track had already reached the village.⁹ The station is the end of the ride for most visitors, and it is where our guide to the village and its markets begins, with the gardens and the platform worth a few minutes before you head into the lanes.

The railway had a second career in the world wars. Engineers Australia notes that during World War 2 it serviced huge camps and hospitals, and the Kuranda village site adds that the Kuranda Hotel was used as a medical centre and hospital by Army Field Ambulance Units.^11,45 A line built to carry supplies for the tableland became a supply route for troops, and the hospital in the village shows how much of daily life ran through the station.

The power station nearby tells a parallel story. The Kuranda village site records that the Barron Gorge Hydroelectric Power Station opened in 1935 as Queensland's first hydroelectric power station.¹⁰ The same gorge that carried the railway also gave the region its first source of such electricity, which is worth remembering when the cableway passes over it on the way down, with the rock walls close below the gondola.

Today the railway is run by Queensland Rail with heritage carriages and a timetable of its own, with trains twice a day all year except Christmas Day.¹² That is a long way from a mining supply line, but the route, the tunnels and the bridges are the ones the workers left, and they are what you are looking at through the window.