Скачать или смотреть The Aftermath of the Mossman Railway Closure | The Cairns Railfan

Hello everyone! After 4 months, I finally have my video exploring the abandoned Mossman Mill sugarcane railway network completed! Today, it will be a deep dive into almost every corner of the Mossman Mill railway network that I could cover. The sugar mill has been operating since 1897 and up to 2023 ran a ~60km 610mm (2ft) gauge rail network during the usual Australian sugarcane season lasting from June-December.

Ever since the turn of the 21st century Mossman Mill has been suffering various issues with staying afloat and was often a struggle to keep it running. Due to various building issues of mill maintenance, weather, finances, sugarcane intake and more over the past couple years unfortunately Mossman Mill had it's final season in 2023 and the mill would not operate in 2024, nor ever again.

By October 2024, the mills assets and rollingstock were being sold off so I turned up around this time to grab photos of as much of the network before things started to get disassembled and sent off on a large scale. This allowed me to see a lot of the mills rollingstock before it was either sold or scrapped and made exploration of the rail network a lot easier before it became almost invisible under vegetation overgrowth. I was also lucky enough to see Mossman cane being transferred to trucks for transport 100km south to Mulgrave Mill in Gordonvale, where a deal had been organised so Mossman sugarcane could still be crushed. I feel very lucky I was able to see the final years of operation of this 126 year old milling railway in 2022 and 2023 but it definitely leaves a now sombre feeling seeing what has become of it.

Nowadays in 2025 the mill network has become further buried in vegetation, the wagons are being scrapped and most of the rollingstock has been sent to other sugar mills such as South Johnstone Mill nearby Innisfail. The truck transport is continuing but faces controversy with the amount of money from the state government it requires to fund.

This video took a long time to make and was definitely stuck in a "development hell" stage where I had issues with my video editor, motivation to consistently work on this video and dealing with constantly developing information regarding the mill's closure, especially with it's aftermath. The fact that this video is almost entirely voiced over made things quite difficult and lengthy to get through as well, but finally it is out!! I hope you enjoy!

Satellite imagery maps from services such as Google Earth, Google Maps and the Queensland Government, railway map related labeling and markings created by me with tools such as Microsoft PowerPoint, OpenStreetMap, Google My Maps and Maptiler. Information sources from news outlets and websites such as The Cairns Post, Newsport, Queensland Country Life, Grays, Colliers, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Wikipedia. Special thanks to Joseph Dietz for assisting with Bally Hooley Steam Railway related information. Photos and videos that were not from news sources or those that I did not take were from Russell Anderson, Joseph Dietz and fmnut.

Intro and Outro Music was created by RKvc and is called "Fused" and was made for the YouTube Audio Library. Here is the link to the song:    • Fused (Audio) ∙ “MAKE IT” by RKVC ∙ YouTub...