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.
Transport in Edinburgh
Edinburgh once had a well-developed rail network. It started with the Edinburgh and Dalkeith Railway, whose terminus was at St Leonards on the east of the Old Town, and the Edinburgh, Leith and Newhaven Railway (later the Edinburgh, Leith and Granton Railway), whose terminus was at Canal Street (on the site of today's Waverley Station). The Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway opened in 1842. By the mid-20th century, competition between the North British Railway and the Caledonian Railway, together with the conservatism of the city's local government, combined to make the network very inefficient, with much duplication of routes. Most stations closed down and, following the Beeching Axe in the late 1960s, the city was left with only three passenger railway stations: Waverley, Haymarket and Slateford. The South Suburban line was left in place, mainly as a bypass for freight services to avoid the city centre.