The Sedan railway line was originally a broad-gauge railway line on the South Australian Railways network. It branched off from the Adelaide to Wolseley line at Monarto South to head 70 kilometres north to Sedan.
The line opened from Monarto South to Sedan in 1919. The original stations were at Pallamana, Tepko, Apamurra, Milendella, Sanderston, Kanappa, Cambrai, and Sedan, with station buildings and livestock loading facilities at Apamurra, Cambrai, and Sedan.
In 1964, the line was cut back to Cambrai, briefly reopening in 1967 to assist in the construction of the Swan Reach to Sedan pipeline. Services were cut back further to Apamurra in 1987, and the line north of Apamurra was abandoned.
The line south of Apamurra was converted to standard gauge in 1995. In 2001, parts of the line between Apamurra and Cambrai were removed by the Pichi Richi Railway for use on its Stirling North to Port Augusta line. Despite the upgrade in 1995, the line was closed due to poor track conditions just ten years later.
Earliest evidence of suggestions of a line to Sedan surfaces around the mid-1800s when the route of the intercolonial railway to Melbourne was a hot topic. That route was settled in 1878, and it was around that time settlers from the area and the Murray Flats began advocating for a line from Monarto to Sedan. It was even suggested that a railway through such country would be cheaper than a road at the time.
Many routes for new lines into and around the mid-north, hills, and Barossa were still being debated right into the early 1900s, and a 1914 Royal Commission was established to report on the proposed Sedan railway. It considered a range of interesting routes for the line to Sedan.
These options, including variations through Tea Tree Gully, were all rejected because of the major engineering challenges involved in crossing the ranges. They were considered either too steep or too costly. There was also discussion of linking Sedan to the main South line somewhere near Callington, which would have allowed connections through to Victor Harbor.
Decades went by, meetings were held, petitions sent, and plans made, but nothing happened. Among this swirling mass of plans and surveys, politics, and advocacy, the 1914 Royal Commission report resolved at the time that the best route to Sedan was via a line from Balhannah via Mount Pleasant and Palmer. Obviously, something changed quickly, and I’m not sure exactly what. Although there are many opinions out there, there’s nothing concrete I can find in the records.
The two lines were finally assented to: the line to Mount Pleasant was completed in 1918, and this line to Sedan was completed in 1919—a full 40 years after they had been first requested.
Monarto South opened in 1886 after the Adelaide-Wolseley railway line was extended to Bordertown. It later became a junction station when the Sedan line opened. Following standardisation, the station building itself was demolished, although it was thankfully preserved and moved to the Old Tailem Town Pioneer Village. The grain yard has since fallen completely out of use, with trucks now transporting grain directly from the silos, but the 1,550-metre crossing loop remains fully operational today.
From here, the line curves away to the north and crosses the old Princes Highway near the Monarto Safari Park. It then crosses Dry Creek and Rocky Gully Creek, intersects the Murray Bridge-Onkaparinga pipeline near the old town of Monarto, and then passes through undulating country and across Preammima Creek.
Originally named Preamimma Railway Station, the Pallamana siding was immediately north of the level crossing on the Palmer to Murray Bridge road.
Services on this section only ever consisted of mixed goods trains with a guard’s van tacked onto the back for passengers. The main freight carried on the line consisted of manures, general goods, and livestock inwards, while the outwards freight was mainly firewood harvested from Sedan, bagged grain, livestock, machinery manufactured at Mannum, and wool.
Next up on the route is the Salt Creek Bridge, standing as a rugged reminder of the structural engineering required to span these watercourses.
There’s not a lot of information available about Tepko other than the fact that there was a siding here, but looking from the ground today, it’s incredibly hard to tell.
Tepko blossomed after the arrival of the railway with daily trains to Adelaide, frequent mails, a grain handling agent at the rail siding, a shop, post office and eventually telephone exchange. Grain handling was eventually transferred from Tepko to the silos at Apamurra and the town withered and died. Only a few houses are left at Tepko today.
The Reedy Creek Bridge is very similar in design to the railway bridge found near Spalding and it is proudly heritage listed.
Shown on the original construction plans as ‘Palmer’ railway station—except for the fact that the actual town of Palmer is three kilometres away—the name was wisely changed to Apamurra. This was one of the few stations along the line to feature a resident stationmaster, along with Sedan.
A five-ton crane once stood right by the goods siding here to load heavy machinery sent from the Shearer agricultural machines factory over at Mannum. Pipes for the massive Mannum to Adelaide pipeline also provided a major source of heavy traffic through here during the 1950s..
The siding here at Milendella was located just south of Long Gully Road. The bridge structure here is remarkably similar to the one at Salt Creek. The historic village of Bonython is located nearby. While all the stations along the line appear to have originally had platforms and sidings, most evidence is long gone today. The low volume of daily traffic simply didn’t warrant passing sidings in most of these locations.
Arriving at Sanderston, the sheer steepness of the road leading up the rugged escarpment here was one of the primary reasons the local community desperately called for a railway line to be constructed.
Further north, the line needed another substantial crossing, here at the Saunders Creek Bridge.
We move past the remote location of Kanappa, where the old railway alignment continues to cut a straight path through the scrub.
The line then crosses the substantial Marne River Bridge and its accompanying flood openings, designed to handle the sudden torrents that flow off the ranges.
There were original station buildings and livestock loading facilities here at Cambrai, which is locally pronounced Cambray, but boy, is it incredibly difficult to find old archive images of them!
By 1973, regularly scheduled services to Cambrai were entirely suspended, and trains only ran out here on an as-required basis. By 1978, when Australian National took over the network, trains stopped running past Apamurra altogether. Locomotives utilised on this line were mainly the reliable Rx-class steam engines, and later on, the diesel 830-class.
When the Cambrai-Sedan section was reopened for the transport of supplies for the Swan Reach-Stockwell pipeline it was classed as a tramway as the Act to provide for the discontinuance of the railway had already been enacted (17th November 1966). As a tramway the Railways Commissioner didn’t have to accept any loading and trains no longer had right of way at level crossings and had to be piloted over them.
Sedan was originally settled back in the 1850s. Once a busy and important railway town, complete with its own steam flour mill and an active agricultural machinery factory, Sedan used to be the proud terminus of this line. As we noted, it was cut back to Cambrai in 1964, apart from a very brief respite two years later to handle the pipeline construction traffic.
There was once so much infrastructure located right here! Sedan featured a dedicated locomotive depot siding complete with an ash pit, coaling station, and water replenishment infrastructure. The old Mount Barker locomotive shed was even relocated here to provide overnight shelter for the engines. A full reversing triangle stretched away to the west via switches situated at either end of the old passenger platform. An extension of this triangle track directly served the local stockyards and a nearby lime quarry.
The beginning of the end for the line started when the Transport Control Board conducted a formal review in 1958. They found that, by then, most of the regional areas served by the railway were no longer fundamentally dependent on it. Still, even though the board clearly found there was a solid case for the line’s total closure, they didn’t want to pull the rug out from underneath the community just yet. By 1964, bulk grain handling along the line—from Cambrai at least—had temporarily improved the financial situation, but the remaining line to Sedan was only seeing a single train run per fortnight.
The closures eventually began, bit by bit. There were a few memorable special passenger trains run up and down the line from the 1960s right through until the line’s final closure, which left behind some incredibly colourful local stories.
Despite a number of thought bubbles over the years, even the standard-gauge line gradually fell into severe disrepair and was eventually booked out of use for good in 2005.
The last regularly scheduled train left Sedan over 60 years ago in 1964.
Today, Sedan is a historic rural town in the Mid Murray. Located roughly 100 k’s from Adelaide. It’s known for its 19th-century architecture and dry-stone walls built by early settlers.
Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed the article. Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
Check out my video about the line on YouTube: https://youtu.be/1xucFPcaBRI
REFERENCES:
“Railways in the Adelaide Hills” – Roger Sallis
National Railway Museum – https://nrm.org.au
State Library of South Australia