Adelaide-Port Augusta railway line

The Adelaide-Port Augusta railway line is the primary rail corridor in South Australia for northbound rail traffic out of Adelaide. The line forms part of the Perth–Adelaide and Adelaide–Darwin rail route, and the portion south of Crystal Brook forms part of the Adelaide–Sydney rail route.

Genesee & Wyoming Australia, Great Southern Rail, Pacific National and SCT Logistics operate services via the line.

SCT Logistics' Penfield intermodal terminal is connected to a siding south of the Northern Expressway and the Bolivar crossing loop.

History
The government-owned South Australian Railways started to build the broad-gauge Salisbury–Long Plains line as a branch off the Main North line in 1915, completing it in April 1917. The line was extended from to Redhill from 1917 to 1925, and again from Redhill to Port Pirie in 1937. In the latter year, the Commonwealth Railways extended its standard gauge Trans-Australian Railway line from Port Augusta south to Port Pirie.

In 1980, the Federal and State Governments entered an agreement to convert the line from Adelaide to standard gauge, albeit altered to meet the Trans-Australian Railway at Crystal Brook. This allowed Adelaide to become the last mainland state capital to join the standard gauge network. The line opened in 1982. It runs on the western side of the same corridor as the Gawler railway line from north of Salisbury railway station to the triangle near Adelaide Gaol, and continues on the western side of the metropolitan broad gauge tracks to Adelaide Parklands Terminal. The new line allowed Australian National to operate The Ghan, Indian Pacific and Trans-Australian through to Adelaide without passengers having to change trains. In July 1998, it became part of the Australian Rail Track Corporation network.

Until late 2017, this meant that the standard gauge trains had to cross the Outer Harbor railway line at-grade at Torrens Junction, north of the River Torrens. In 2017, this conflict was removed by lowering the suburban Outer Harbor line into a trench so it could pass under the standard gauge line. This would ease timetable and operational conflicts on both services.

Crossing loops
The maximum length of trains on this line is 1.8 kilometres, and almost all crossing loops are of this length. East of Mile End the maximum train length is 1.5 kilometres, though this is starting to be increased to 1.8 kilometres also.

Mile End
The crossing loop at the Adelaide Parklands Terminal at Mile End is of length 1,658m.

Dry Creek
The first crossing loop north of Adelaide, of length 1,950m, is south of Dry Creek.

Bolivar
The original Bolivar crossing loop is located about 30 km by rail from Mile End, between Taylors Road, (now the western end of the Northern Expressway), and King Road, both in Virginia. (The King Road gated level crossing actually crossed two tracks.) As Virginia pre-existed the original building of the line, it is unclear why the crossing loop was named "Bolivar" - Bolivar is several kilometres from Virginia; there is no local passenger train service on this line, and long distance passenger trains do not stop.

Australian Rail Track Corporation has a file dated 2004 with a diagram of Bolivar loop.

In 2012, after replacement of the Taylors Road level crossing with an overbridge, the Bolivar crossing loop was extended from 1200m to the standard 1800m.

Penfield intermodal hub
In 2007, it was proposed that an Intermodal Rail/Road facility be built in the Edinburgh Parks area. Accordingly, an area of rural/agricultural land in Penfield was rezoned in 2008.

In the 2010s, SCT Logistics and another company started to develop an intermodal hub. The new facilities and trackwork commenced construction on the north-east side of the line, south of the Northern Expressway and north of Heaslip Road and RAAF Base Edinburgh, in 2011/2012.

Two Wells
The next crossing loop, of length 1,817m, is at Two Wells - the loop is between Gawler Rd and Tenby Rd.

Others
There are about a dozen other crossing loops north of Two Wells - refer to the infobox to the right.

Crystal Brook
Crystal Brook includes the triangle junction with the main line to Broken Hill and Sydney. Then there is a 968m crossing loop and siding with provision to load grain at the silos in the town. The tracks converge to single track to cross a bridge over the Crystal Brook, then split into double track for the 20km to Coonamia. The western track is for northbound travel and the eastern track for southbound, except that there is a balloon loop for loading grain from the AWB silos which is accessed by proceeding a short distance north on the eastern track.

Coonamia
Coonamia railway station is the station and triangle junction servicing the town of Port Pirie. It is the northern end of the section of dual track from Crystal Brook.

Port Germein
The 1960m crossing loop at Port Germein had a 110m goods siding commissioned in 2015. The siding is operated by SCT Logistics.