Marree was a big time railway town up to 1980. About 400 kilometres south of Oodnadatta and 685 north of Adelaide, it was firstly a terminus, then an important stop on the Great Northern Railway from Port Augusta to Alice Springs. Then it was a break-of-gauge station when the standard-gauge railway arrived. It was a serious railway and service town. In 1980, though, the railway line was re-routed a few hundred kilometres to the west. When the last train left Marree for Oodnadatta, the locals, desperate to keep the railway going and in a just-slightly-futile protest, kept uncoupling the carriages so the train couldn’t depart. It’s apparently been all downhill since then. Marree now has a pub, a general store and a collection of rusty old Commonwealth Railways locomotives gathered around the remains of the railway
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