Qualla: Pichi Richi Railway

Pichi Richi Railway: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit GeorgieSharp, CC BY-SA 3.0. When the Commonwealth Railways stopped running trains through Pichi Richi Pass in 1970, the plan was to tear it all out, the bridges, the rails, even the hand-built dry stone walls that had held the line against the hillsides since 1878. It was the end of a railway that had once been part of something epic: the slow push north from Port Augusta toward the Red Centre of Australia, the route that became the legendary Ghan. But a group of locals in the small Flinders Ranges town of Quorn refused to let it vanish. What they began in 1973 has grown into one of Australia's great preservation stories, a 39-kilometre heritage line where Edwardian steam still works its way through the pass.

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Image: GeorgieSharp | CC BY-SA 3.0

Pichi Richi Railway: The Line to the Red Centre

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kerry Raymond at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. The railway was never meant to be a tourist attraction. It began in 1878 at Port Augusta as the South Australian Railways' line to service mining and to reach the inland, climbing through Pichi Richi Pass and opening at Quorn in 1879. From there it crept north for decades, reachi...

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Image: Kerry Raymond at English Wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Pichi Richi Railway: A Name Older Than the Rails

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit qwesy qwesy, CC BY 3.0. The pass, and the railway, take their name from a word far older than any locomotive. Pichi Richi is thought to derive from the region's role as a traditional source of pituri, a preparation of native leaves and ash chewed as a stimulant by First Nations people, traded across vas...

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Image: qwesy qwesy | CC BY 3.0

Pichi Richi Railway: Saved by Volunteers

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Redhen334, CC BY-SA 4.0. On 22 July 1973 the not-for-profit Pichi Richi Railway Preservation Society was incorporated, its first purpose simply to protect the 1878 dry stone walls and the bridges of the pass from demolition. Restoring trains seemed a distant dream, yet just twelve months after they began...

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Image: Redhen334 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Pichi Richi Railway: The Coffee Pot and the Old Ghan

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Simont141, CC BY-SA 3.0. The fleet itself is a rolling museum. Its rarest treasure is Steam Motor Coach No. 1, the beloved "Coffee Pot," an ornate self-propelled steam railcar whose engine was built by Kitson and Company of Leeds in 1905 and which entered service in 1906, today the last operating example...

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Image: Simont141 | CC BY-SA 3.0