 Peterborough is on the East-west rail corridor connecting Sydney and Perth.The society's formation reflected the fact that before the 1881 narrow-gauge route was rebuilt as a standard gauge line in 1970, it was South Australia’s busiest regional railway hub – venue of the headquarters of the Northern Division of the South Australian Railways, regional train control, and railway workshops and maintenance facilities employing more than 1,000 people to look after more than 100 passing trains a day.After 1970, however, the scale of operations progressively reduced as the functions undertaken at Peterborough were moved elsewhere.