Dry Creek railway to Port Adelaide grows importance as freight mover from 1868; ends passenger service 1988
A Dry-Creek-Port Adelaide passenger/freight train approaching a crossing on its route through the northwest suburbs in about 1905. The Mary MacKillop Bridge over the Port River from 2006 diverted freight from the route through Rosewater.
The Dry Creek-Port Adelaide eight-kilometre east-west railway line had a limited life as passenger service up to 1988 but continued growing the importance of its original freight role from 1868.
The railway from Dry Creek, on the Kapunda line, to Port Adelaide from 1868 was to allow goods and minerals from South Australia's mid north (and from 1878, the River Murray at Morgan) to reach the port without going via Adelaide. It went directly into Port Dock station (closed in 1981), Port Adelaide's main railyard in the 19th Century.
One of the most important additions was the Rosewater loop, in 1915, to ease congestion at Port Dock yard. It linked Port Adelaide "A" Junction with a new route to Glanville via the Commercial Road viaduct and Ethelton and helped divert all through trains away from the Port Dock bottleneck. This became the main Outer Harbor suburban passenger line.
In 1978, ownership and control of the line shifted from the State Transport Authority (STA) to the federal government’s Australian National, although the STA continued operating local passenger trains over the route. After the Port Dock station and yards closed in 1981, it became the National Railway Museum site in 1988, still connected to the Adelaide Metro route but rarely used.
In 1982, the line was converted from broad to a dual (broad/standard) track, coinciding with Australian National converting the Crystal Brook-Adelaide line to standard gauge. This included converting the Rosewater loop to dual gauge, and a section of Outer Harbor from Rosewater junction to Large Bay station where the dual gauge would branch off on a new alignment to service sidings west of the Port River. It also included standard gauge access to those sidings and the Pelican Point container berths. A new Birkenhead loop branched further south at Glanville station and entered all the sidings from the south.
The original route into Port Adelaide through Gillman marshalling yards closed when the yards were removed in the early 1990s. After Adelaide-Melbourne corridor converted to standard gauge in 1995, a south-to-west standard gauge triangle was built at Dry Creek to allow trains from Melbourne and Islington freight terminal to travel directly to Port Adelaide without reversing in Dry Creek yard.
In 2006, the seven kilometres of track on LeFevre Peninsula was upgraded for Mary MacKillop Bridge opening over the Port River, coinciding with the new deep sea grain terminal at Pelican Point. The bridge diverted trains from the Rosewater loop and suburban rail network in Port Adelaide so all rail freight to and from LeFevre Peninsula travelled along the Gillman Junction to Port Flat line and accesses the existing line to Pelican Point via the new bridge.
The main traffic using the Dry Creek-Port Adelaide line became intermodal freight trains (import/export containers); bulk grain trains from South Australian agricultural areas for export via Port Adelaide; and other freight trains servicing industry (such as Mobil oil terminal) on LeFevre Peninsula.
In the early years, passengers were carried on the line in carriages attached to goods trains. With Brill railcars introduced during the railways commissioner William Webb 1920s era several return trips ran each weekday between Dry Creek and Port Dock. Intermediate basic stops were at Wingfield, North Arm Road, Eastern Parade, Grand Junction Road and Rosewater. When the General Motors-Holden car factory opened at Elizabeth in 1959, extra trains were added from Port Dock at the factoryat shift-change time.
By 1969, trains no longer stopped at Grand Junction Road or Eastern Parade stations. When Port Dock station closed in 1981, these trains were diverted to run to or from Outer Harbor via Commercial Road station. By 1987, the STA had the route was uneconomic. All passenger trains were withdrawn a year later and Rosewater and Grand Junction Road stations closed.
