Historic Photo of the Day: 2025-09-10

Today's historic photo of the day: EMD diesel loco GM12 in AN green and yellow livery sits at the standard gauge platform at Peterborough, SA, April 11 1985. Peterborough is about 250km north of Adelaide in the mid-north region of South Australia. It was a railway town that housed a depot serving railways of three track gauges radiating in all four compass directions. When this photo was taken, it was not only a passenger station on the east-west transcontinental standard gauge line, it was also the northern terminus of a broad gauge passenger line from Adelaide and the southern terminus of a goods-only narrow gauge line to Quorn via Orrorroo and Eurelia. In this photo, which is looking east from the Hurlstone St level crossing, we see the standard gauge main line running straight ahead, and a broad gauge line from top right crossing it via a diamond crossing. This section of broad gauge track leading to the depot is just metres from the very northernmost point that broad gauge ever reached anywhere in Australia - which was somewhere in Peterborough yard. At left are some multi-gauge sidings, and a narrow gauge grain train can be seen in the distance. In late 1988, the narrow gauge line closed. Peterborough lost its broad gauge connection to Adelaide around the same time and nowadays east-west transcontinental standard gauge trains are all that remain. So what was once a triple-gauge yard with depot, station and workshops is now not much more than a crossing loop, although there is an excellent railway museum at Peterborough that is very much worth a visit.