Railways and Tramways of Australia

A bridge to Katherine

 

The Northern Territory town of Katherine saw its first train on 21 January 1926.

 

It had been a lengthy wait for Katherine. The first railway in the Northern Territory opened from Darwin (then called Palmerston) to Pine Creek in 1889. It was extended to Emungalan, only two kilometres from Katherine, in December 1917. But it would take over eight years for the two towns to be connected: a bridge over the Katherine River was required.

 

Work on the bridge commenced in 1924. Iron work was manufactured by the State Dockyard at Walsh Island in New South Wales. There are seven spans, each 100 feet (30 metres) in length. Reinforced concrete piers carry the spans, which are more than 75 feet (23 metres) above the bed of the river at the highest point. By January 1926 work was ongoing but the bridge was ready for its first train. NG Class locomotive no. 9 (previously Queensland Railways B13 Class no. 44) is believed to have hauled the first train, which crossed the bridge without fuss and arrived in Katherine.

 

The terminus of the railway was moved to a new station at Katherine later in the year. Over the coming decades the North Australia Railway served the needs of the top end of Australia and was particularly busy during the Second World War. However, operating losses led to services on the line ceasing in 1976 and the Katherine River Bridge became disused. When the Alice Springs to Darwin railway was completed in 2004 it was built on a new alignment with a new bridge over the Katherine River.

 

The original bridge is now a pedestrian throughfare, standing as a reminder of when the first train crossed in 1926.

 

Bibliography

JY Harvey, ‘The North Australia Railway, 1911 – 1939’, Australian Railway Historical Society Bulletin, no. 400, February 1971, pp 39–47.

JY Harvey, The Never-Never Line: the story of the North Australia Railway, Hyland House, Melbourne, 1987.

The Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, Report on Commonwealth Railways operations for the year ended 30th June 1929,

     Government Printer, Victoria, 1929.

‘Town talk’, Northern Territory Times and Gazette, 26 January 1926, p 3.