The
Silverton Tramway was an Australian 56-kilometre long 1,067 mm narrow gauge railway running from
Cockburn on the South Australian state border to
Broken Hill in New South Wales. Operating between 1888 and 1970 it served the mines of
Broken Hill, and formed the link between the standard gauge New South Wales Government Railways and the narrow gauge South Australian Railways. The line was owned and operated by the
Silverton Tramway Company.
The
Silverton Tramway was conceived as a way to transport ore from the newly discovered ore deposits at
Silverton, to the smelters at
Port Pirie, with the line later extended to
Broken Hill with the discovery of that field in 1883 by a boundary rider called Charles Rasp .
Image Could Not Be Found
The need for a private line was in part due to the NSW Government refusing to allow the South Australian Railways to complete their narrow gauge link across the border. The
Silverton Tramway Act was passed by New South Wales in 1886, permitting the narrow gauge line to be built. The Act also permitted the New South Wales government to buy out the company and assets after 21 years, provided a payment of 21 times the average of the previous seven years, and that the Company could be obliged to alter the track gauge at any time at its own expense. The line was built in twelve months at a cost of 125,000 pounds.
Once opened, major traffic on the line included passengers, livestock, bullion, ore and concentrates. In 1913, 844,477 tons of ore and concentrates were carried on the tramway and another 843,307 tons of other goods including coke, coal, timber, crude oil and livestock, and by 1933 twenty steam locomotives were owned by the company, along with 660 goods wagons. Passenger
services were operated by the South Australian Railways, who paid the Company to access the line, the main passenger terminal in
Broken Hill being at Sulphide Street. By the 1950s the Company was also providing a shunting service on 40 km of sidings in
Broken Hill, and was also operating steam locomotives up to 62 feet long and weighting 97 tons. Diesel locomotives were delivered from 1961, appearing in the yellow and blue colours some years later.
Image Could Not Be Found
Image Could Not Be Found
(Note: The lower photo above shows what was the Tom Mann train, special trains were run to
Cockburn to listen to the speeches by Tom Mann to the Strikers in 1909, the reason was that Mann was banned from giving speeches in NSW so they all went over the border into SA.)
The New South Wales government did not wish the Company to remain as a main line operator, or to purchase it themselves, while South Australian train crews were not happy to work trains across the state border due to a loss of favourable industrial conditions. When the Company purchased its diesel locomotives, a number of structures, including bridges, were modified to carry standard gauge, as the company ordered the wider bogies needed to operate on standard gauge. By 1967 the
Silverton Tramway Company offered to build a standard gauge line for a fixed sum, and transfer the line to New South Wales soon after. This line would run from
Cockburn to
Broken Hill on an alignment that had some interaction with the existing Crystal Street station, but the Commonwealth Government rejected it as they wished for the line to be built on a totally new alignment away from the Company lines. By 1968 South Australia believed that they would have gauge converted their portion of the line before the short section to
Broken Hill was even finished.
Silverton Tramway, The standard gauge line was finally opened in 1970 on a new alignment which led directly to the New South Wales-operated Crystal Street station, taking one year and over $2 million more than if the
Silverton proposal was carried out. The
Silverton Tramway Company's business was lost to the South Australian Railways, with the company closing its narrow gauge shortline business, and returning the permanent way to the Crown.
Image Could Not Be Found
The company then reinvented itself as
Silverton Rail, a short haul rail operator servicing the mining industry in and around
Broken Hill. Since 1886 the company hauled some 90 million tonnes of bulk and general freight and 2.8 million passengers over an aggregate of 19 million kilometres.