Mount Pleasant railway line

The Mount Pleasant railway line was a railway line on the South Australian Railways network. It was opened between Balhannah and Mount Pleasant in September 1918 and ran until March 1963 as a freight and passenger service. Part of its trackbed is now the Amy Gillett Bikeway rail trail near to Adelaide.

History

The line opened on 16 September 1918 between Balhannah, 10 kilometres east of Mount Lofty, and Mount Pleasant. It had six stations and a number of halts; typically, the halts were located near level crossings. The six stations were Oakbank, Woodside, Charleston, Mount Torrens, Birdwood, and Mount Pleasant. The seven halts were Mappinga, Riverview, Kayannie, Muralappie, Milkappa Road, Crane Road, and Narcoonah.
The line was closed on 4 March 1963, and the way between Balhannah and Oakbank has mostly returned to private landowners.

Rail trail

This former railway is in the jurisdiction of the Adelaide Hills Council, which in 2003 commissioned a feasibility study into the best use of the land. The report recommended it be converted to a rail trail, with which the council agreed but considered beyond their means to implement. However, since that time, the development of a rail trail led to the opening of the Amy Gillett Bikeway in 2010, named in honour of the late Amy Gillett, a South Australian-born Olympic cyclist who had died in 2005. As of 2015, the conversion had reached from Balhannah to Mount Torrens. The trail is in the process of being extended to Birdwood.