Etheridge railway line
The Etheridge Railway line, which branches off the Mareeba-to-Chillagoe railway at Almaden and heads south for to Forsayth via Mount Surprise and Einasleigh, was built between 1907 and 1910 by the Chillagoe Railway and Mining Company as a private railway line. The same company constructed the railway line from Mareeba to Chillagoe and Mungana between 1898 and 1901. The Etheridge line was built cheaply, with lighter rails and fewer earthworks than the Chillagoe line, to supply ore to the Chillagoe Company's under-utilised Chillagoe smelters. The Chillagoe Company was part of the business empire of John Moffat, and between 1880 and 1914 much of the economic activity of North Queensland was driven by the railways and mining towns created by Moffat's enterprises. The remaining built infrastructure at stations along the Etheridge Railway provides examples of the type of buildings erected by the Chillagoe Company for its railway network.
Edmund Wragge
On his return from Costa Rica, Wragge’s letters indicate that he worked on a project in the English Midlands for some months until Sir Charles Fox secured for him the position of chief engineer of the Toronto, Grey and Bruce Railway (TG&BR), and the Toronto and Nipissing Railway (T&NR) in July 1869. This placement must have been settled by telegram, because Douglas Fox left Toronto on 27 July 1869, promising to have an engineer sent out, and Edmund Wragge departed for Norway to see Pihl’s narrow gauge railways on 1 August 1869. Wragge arrived in Toronto in September 1869 and between that time and late 1874 he engineered and constructed over 280 route miles of the 3 ft 6 in gauge railways, at a total cost of £900,000. The railways were built economically as a practical means of opening up the interior of the Province of Ontario to settlement.