Laheys Tramway
private railway in Queensland, Australia
Laheys Tramway or Canungra Pine Creek Tramway was a private timber railway in South East Queensland, Australia. It connected at Canungra on the Canungra line and consisted of a 16+1⁄2 miles (26+1⁄2 km) 'main line' to Upper Coomera and two branches. Its tunnel was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 11 April 2005.
Background
Canungra was the centre of regional timber production from the 1860s and the Lahey family built a large sawmill there, completed in 1885. Situated in the middle of a hoop pine forest, logs were initially hauled short distances to the mill by bullock teams, but as the haulage distance increased a more efficient method was required.
History
Rail engineer George Phillips surveyed and designed the route of the tramway. The gauge of 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) was chosen to match that of the Queensland Government railways. The tramway opened in 1900, and initially used bullocks. Laid with 35 lb/yd (17 kg/m) rail, the track climbed a ridge at an average grade of 1 in 12½ (8%) to a 300 ft (90 m) tunnel, before descending at an average grade of 1 in 16½ (6%) into the adjacent Coomera River valley, using curves as tight as 120 ft (37 m) radius. One and a quarter miles (2 km) had been built by 1901, and in 1903 the line was 5 miles (8 km) long.
“Laheys Tramway” enters the record as private railway in Queensland, Australia. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Laheys, Tramway and private can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18205795. Authority coordinates are -28.023, 153.172. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2005, 1885, 1900 and 1901.
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This entry incorporates text from “Laheys Tramway” 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.