Rails Around Coffs Harbour - Rambles Around the Yards

I'm back at it again, this time exploring an area I've known since childhood - the North Coast Line around Coffs Harbour.

The North Coast railway line is the primary rail route in the Mid North Coast and Northern Rivers regions of New South Wales, Australia. It’s a major part of the Sydney–Brisbane rail corridor.

It was a difficult line to build. It crosses many large rivers and winds through some mountainous country.

The line began with a railway from Maitland to Dungog in 1911. It was extended to Gloucester, Taree, and Coffs Harbour in 1913, and from Glenreagh to South Grafton (now Grafton station) in 1915. The gap between Coffs Harbour and Glenreagh, which contains five tunnels, was completed in 1922.

There were once quite a few timber tramways in the area, and I’ll get into them later, for now, let’s look at the area around Coffs Harbour.

You know, I’m not an expert, I’m just an explorer, so join me as I explore a little bit of the history of rails around Coffs Harbour through historic images and a tour to check out what the area looks like today.

Coffs jetty was built well before the breakwaters in the early 1890s to make loading timber and other goods onto ocean going ships much easier.
It once had rail lines and huge cranes along a much longer jetty. What remains today is a tourist shadow of its former glory.

The ‘headland’ was actually a separate island once. At high tide seas from south boiled through a rocky passage. In 1913, work commenced to build a viaduct connecting the mainland to South Coff Island on which a quarry would provide rock for the breakwaters including filling the gap, partially enclosing the harbour area.

The arrival of the railway in 1912 meant Coffs Harbour’s days as a major shipping port were numbered - the number of ships loaded at the jetty dropped by more than half by the 1930s.

But, light railways helped build the break walls stone by stone! The original layout of the Coffs station yards allowed for connections to these construction lines.

There’s only a single main line serving the station and all the way through Coffs. NSW TrainLink operates three daily XPT services from Sydney terminating at Grafton, Casino and Brisbane that stop at Coffs Harbour for only a few minutes at a time.

Today, freight services on the North Coast Line are operated by Pacific National, SCT Logistics and Qube. These super freighters don’t serve the towns they pass through though. Back in the government railways era, there would be regular freight services to towns such as Kempsey, Grafton, Casino, and Coffs Harbour.

The only freight train that regularly services the North Coast Line today is a cement and sugar train for Grafton.

IMAGE CREDITS:

National Railway Museum - https://nrm.org.au/

City of Coffs Harbour - https://coffs.recollect.net.au/

Museums of History New South Wales - https://mhnsw.au/

Chairs: MHNSW-StAC: NRS-17420-2-25 -817/000 | Railway Refreshment Room, North Coast, Coffs Harbour NSW 09-07-1947
Staff behind bar: MHNSW-StAC: NRS-17420-2-25-817/008 | Railway Refreshment Room, North Coast, Coffs Harbour NSW 09-07-1947
Liquor: MHNSW-StAC: NRS-17420-2-25-817/006 | Railway Refreshment Room, North Coast, Coffs Harbour NSW 09-07-1947
Kitchen: MHNSW-StAC: NRS-17420-2-25-817/003 | Railway Refreshment Room Kitchen, North Coast, Coffs Harbour NSW 09-07-1947
Crowding In: MHNSW-StAC: NRS-17420-2-25-817/005 | Railway Refreshment Room, North Coast, Coffs Harbour NSW 09-07-1947
Crowding In 2: MHNSW-StAC: NRS-17420-2-25-817/004 | Railway Refreshment Room, North Coast, Coffs Harbour NSW 09-07-1947