Billy Edwards
In 1888 Australian workers built a railway from Sydney to the Queensland border at Wallangarra. Through granite country. Through the New England tablelands. Over the ranges. Across the rivers. They called it the Great Northern Railway and for exactly one hundred years it connected the wheat and wool country of northern NSW to the nation. It moved grain. It moved livestock. It moved people. It was the original inland rail link between Sydney and Brisbane long before Inland Rail was ever imagined.
In 1988 the Greiner government commissioned a management consultants report and closed the line progressively north of Glen Innes. In 1989 the last train ran north of Glen Innes. In 1991 the Roads and Traffic Authority built a highway deviation over the top of the rail corridor at Bluff Rock south of Tenterfield, physically severing the line. Not closing it. Driving a road through it.
The corridor from Armidale to Wallangarra has sat there since. 210 kilometres of formed railway through some of the most spectacular country in NSW. The stations are still standing at Guyra, Glen Innes, Deepwater, Tenterfield and Ben Lomond, the highest railway station in Australia at 1,363 metres above sea level. The track formation is still largely in place. The corridor still exists.
And what has the government decided to do with it?
Turn it into a bike trail.
Armidale Regional Council and Glen Innes Severn Council have voted to proceed with the New England Rail Trail, a 103 kilometre recreational bike path along the former railway corridor. Both the NSW and federal governments have formally confirmed they have no plans to reinstate rail north of Armidale. The Armidale mayor said the government had been very clear the trains are not coming back so they should be positive and turn the region into an adventure tourism playground.
An adventure tourism playground.
That is what 210 kilometres of formed railway through the agricultural heartland of the New England tablelands is worth to the people making these decisions. A bike path for adventure tourists.
Now consider the timing. In the same week the federal budget confirmed that Inland Rail will stop at Narromine, that the Melbourne to Brisbane freight railway will not be completed north of Narromine for the foreseeable future, the New England rail corridor, an existing alternative inland route connecting NSW to QLD, is being converted into a recreational bike trail. Two decisions. Two levels of government. One outcome. The possibility of an inland rail connection between Sydney and Brisbane is being closed off permanently from both ends simultaneously.
The Trains North community group has been fighting to protect this corridor. They commissioned their own plan called the New England Connection showing how the Main North Line could form part of a modern freight and passenger network linking the New England to both Sydney and Queensland. They have pointed out that the federal government has said it wants to invest in existing rail freight infrastructure rather than face the challenges of greenfield construction and that the GNR is exactly that, an existing rail corridor where the track formation is still in place and it is much easier to upgrade than build from scratch.
They are right. But the councils and the governments are not listening.
Here is what will be lost if this goes ahead. Once the tracks come up and the corridor is leased for 30 years as a recreation trail the possibility of reinstating freight and passenger rail is gone. Not difficult. Not expensive. Gone. Rail corridor once converted to another use does not come back. And 30 years from now when Australia is trying to figure out why it cannot connect the New England to the national freight network without building hundreds of kilometres of expensive greenfield track through private land some future government will be asking why two local councils were allowed to permanently destroy a national transport corridor to build a bike track.
Ben Lomond is the highest railway station in Australia. Wallangarra is where NSW standard gauge met Queensland narrow gauge for a century of cross border trade. Tenterfield is where Henry Parkes gave his famous federation speech calling on the colonies to unite. These are not places without history or without future potential. They are places that deserve better than being turned into a tourism amenity for people who want somewhere scenic to ride their bicycles.
The people who built that railway through granite country in the 1880s with picks and shovels did not do it so their great grandchildren could ride bikes on it.
One more thing. Your observation about what people will be able to afford if the government keeps going the way it is going is more accurate than you might realise. Power bills doubled. Fuel prices through the roof. Gas export tax sitting at 43 cents per hundred dollars while the budget runs a $42 billion deficit. Maybe the government has figured out that bikes are going to be all most Australians can afford and is just getting ahead of the infrastructure requirements.
Billy Edwards
Trains North Inc
15-may-2026