Cougal Spiral
heritage listed railway track and tunnel in New South Wales, Australia
The Cougal Spiral is a heritage-listed single track railway tunnel and spiral in Australia. The feature is located on the North Coast railway line in Australia that connects New South Wales with Queensland under the Border Ranges near Richmond Gap. It was built during 1930. It is also known as the Border Loop railway formation and landscape, Cougal To Border Loop and Railway Spiral and Landscape. The property was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999.
The railway line needs to climb at a steady ruling gradient from Kyogle to the summit at a tunnel at the border between the two states. The border is also at the watershed. The rail spiral and associated facilities are located between 871 and 876 kilometres (541 and 544 mi) from Sydney Central railway station.
Description
Climbing almost non-stop at the ruling grade of 1 in 66 or 1.5% (compensated) the line has almost continuous curves of 240 m (790 ft) radius. Near Cougal, the alignment finally runs out of valley, and has nowhere to go.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Cougal Spiral” as heritage listed railway track and tunnel in New South Wales, Australia. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as heritage listed railway track and tunnel in New South Wales, Australia. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5176002. Authority coordinates are -28.354, 152.964. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1930 and 1999.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cougal Spiral” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.