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.
Dorridge
In 1852 the railway was built by the Great Western Railway, originally in Brunel's preferred 7-foot gauge track. Dorridge railway station, which was originally called "Knowle", and later "Knowle and Dorridge", created the focal point for a new community. The Muntz family granted the land for the railway on condition that a station was built – perhaps less surprising on discovering that the Chairman of the Birmingham & Oxford Railway Company was P. H. Muntz, a relative. There is some folklore about the agreement that suggests that the railway was obliged to stop at Dorridge; however, with the affluent residents of Knowle and Dorridge, it was certainly a commercial practicality. Evidence of the popularity of the railway can be seen in that a "bus" service from the Greswolde Hotel in Knowle was provided in the early days of the railway at the cost of 6d. In its heyday, the train service ran between Lapworth and Birmingham with four tracks, but by the mid-1960s two tracks had been removed and traffic was declining. The link with London was revived in the 1990s as part of the privatisation of British Rail, initially with a single track running south of Banbury. Dual track working was reinstated and today in spite of being a village, Dorridge is still one of the stops on the express service.