Cairns

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We took the 4-mile Skyrail cableway gondola over the World Heritage Rainforest and then we visited the cute little town of Kuranda. Then we rode the Kuranda Scenic Railway which was built to connect Cairns with the North Queensland goldfields. We saw beautiful deep gorges, rivers, vegetation and rugged mountains, taking us by the Barron Falls. The train went through 15 tunnels and across 37 bridges up the Kuranda Ranges, which is part of Barron Gorge National Park. The rainforest, the oldest in the world, is estimated to be 100 million years old.

Stoney Creek Bridge is built on a 4-chain (264 ft) radius curve and was designed by the government engineer John Gwynneth. Using the sharp curve was done to avoid tunnelling. It is one of only two Queensland railway bridges constructed with wrought iron trestles, the other being Christmas Creek Bridge, further up the line. the end of 1887 the concrete foundations on which the wrought iron trestles were erected were well underway. The bridge passed load testing in June 1890.

In the early 1900s large quantities of rock in the vicinity of the bridge were removed, due to the risk of rock falls. Work was carried out in 1916 to strengthen riveted connections, and in 1922 timber longitudinals were substituted for the ballast flooring of the original bridge, to reduce corrosion problems. To strengthen and improve the bridge, in the late 1990s new steel longitudinals were added under the bridge, the timber decking was replaced with steel grating and the walkways at the sides of the bridge were widened to improve maintenance access. The legs of the iron trestles were also reinforced.