Rail transport in South Australia

The first railway in colonial South Australia was a line from the port of Goolwa on the River Murray to an ocean harbour at Port Elliot, which first operated in December 1853, before its completion in May 1854.^[1]

During the following seven decades construction continued, by stops and starts, often to encourage agricultural development or to ameliorate unemployment. Very little additional trackage was built from the 1920s onwards. In 1966, the total was 3991 kilometres (2480 miles), comprising 2657 kilometres (1651 miles) of 1600 mm (5 ft 3 in) and 1334 kilometres (829 miles) of 1067 mm (3 ft 6 in).

Following almost total closure of regional lines in South Australia in the last decades of the twentieth century, today the state's rail network comprises 1435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in) standard gauge links to other states, 1600 mm (5 ft 3 in) broad gauge suburban railways in Adelaide, a narrow-gauge gypsum haulage line on the Eyre Peninsula, and both copper–gold concentrate and coal on the standard-gauge line in the Adelaide–Darwin rail corridor north of Tarcoola.