A new exhibition at Queensland Museum Rail Workshops in Ipswich takes visitors on a 100-year journey celebrating a remarkable construction feat and an important part of the State’s history.

Featuring items from the Queensland Museum collection, The Sunshine Route – 100 years of Queensland’s North Coast Line exhibition showcases a range of objects from uniforms, tableware, menus and tickets to a model carriage, photographs, original film footage and much more, transporting visitors back to the 1880s and all the way through to the 1920s, ’50s, ’90s and present day.

Queensland’s North Coast Line is considered one of the greatest Australian engineering achievements of the 20th century.

It became known as the ‘Sunshine Route’ after opening in 1924 and for 100 years the railway has transported goods and tourists between Queensland’s south and its tropical north.

The 1,678km of railway from Brisbane to Cairns took 35 years to build, snaking through mountains, forests, and across countless creeks and rivers.

It involved generations of construction workers, surveyors and engineers who camped in harsh and unforgiving environments while it was being built.

The opening of the Mackay to St Lawrence section of the line in 1921.

Workers conquered the elements

Queensland Museum CEO Dr Jim Thompson said the exhibition mapped the journey on the North Coast Line that evolved several times over the century.

“The Sunshine Route exhibition highlights the corridors of rail history in Queensland and tells the story of how this train line overcame so many obstacles to be built, including financial challenges, floods, and labour shortage due to war,” Dr Thompson said.

“Remarkably, more than 1,600 bridges were built during this time and the first trains to run between Brisbane and Cairns in the mid-1920s took 53 and a half hours to make the journey – a significant improvement on previous steamship times.

“It was inconceivable that a railway from Brisbane to Cairns could have ever been achieved, but it was, and it has changed the way generations of people travel.”

Construction of the Darradgee Bridge over the Johnstone River near Innisfail in 1924.

Railway an important link

Queensland Museum Curator of Transport and Energy Rob Shiels said while many families could reminisce on travelling at least a leg or two of the North Coast Line, it was designed as much more than a holiday route.

“Before the completion of the line, Queensland was a vast and poorly connected colony that was reliant on expensive, and at times risky, maritime transport,” Rob said.

“Opened in stages, the construction of the railway line gradually linked ports and towns along the eastern seaboard, helping grow the economy by simplifying the movement of people, produce and resources.

An early poster promoting family holidays on the railway.

“The line has really helped to connect Queensland, bringing regional towns and the people who live in them closer together.

“But this exhibition touches on many more stories; for example, during the Second World War the line was a critical piece of infrastructure for Australian and American forces in the Pacific region.”

The Sunshine Route – 100 years of Queensland’s North Coast Line is now open at Queensland Museum Rail Workshops at Ipswich. Entry is included with museum admission, and free for museum Annual Pass holders.

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