The Murwillumbah line branches off the North Coast Line at Casino. The line opened in the following stages:

Casino - Old Casino 6/11/1905
Old Casino - Lismore 19/10/1903
Lismore - Mullumbimby 15/5/1894
Mullumbimby - Murwillumbah 24/12/1894
Murwillumbah - Condong 24/12/1894

There was also a branch from Booyong to Ballina which opened 25/8/1930, and was closed by an Act of Parliament 11/6/1948.

The line originally had several daily passenger trains and general freight (cane, fruit, dairy, etc) trains. The line was served by a variety of locomotives (including 30, 32, 44 and 48 class) and some passenger trains used 600, 620 and 660 class diesel rail cars.

If you have any further information or photos, please email me.

Casino is a pleasant country town on the Richmond River. It has a large number of interesting historic buildings. It is also a major service centre for the rich pasture lands that surround it. Prior to European settlement the Casino district was part of the lands inhabited by the Bundjalung Aborigines. Casino was named after a local property 'Cassino' that was named after the beautiful town of Monte Cassino in Italy. In 1855 the town was officially gazetted as Casino. Between the 1870s and the 1890s the town competed for importance with Lismore and by the 1890s Lismore was clearly the more important of the town centres. The Casino – Old Casino rail section was opened on November 6 1905, but by then the town had already positioned itself as a service centre for the surrounding rich agricultural lands. Today Casino calls itself 'The Beef Capital'. It has an official Beef Week that is held each May - the 'week' actually lasts for 12 days.

Lismore, named after a small island in a loch in the Scottish Highlands, is the major commercial and administrative city on the state's North Coast. The district is one of the country's most closely settled rural areas and one of the principal dairying regions in the state. Other contributions to the local economy are made by pig farming, bacon-curing, the production of bananas, tropical fruit, macadamias and sugar, as well as saw milling, engineering, steel fabrication, brewing and clothing manufacture. Lismore was linked by rail to Murwillumbah in 1894 and to Casino on 19/10/1903.

It is said that the name 'Bangalow' meant either 'a low hill' or a kind of palm tree in the language of the Banjalang Aboriginal people who lived in the area before European settlement in the 1840s. In 1894 the railway arrived and the local station was called 'Bangaloe'. The modern spelling of Bangalow came into existence around 1907 when the school was renamed.

Byron Bay has the distinction of being one of the many places along the east coast of Australia that was named by Captain James Cook as he sailed up the coast in 1770. Cook named the 'high point' Cape Byron after Vice-Admiral John Byron who was the grandfather of the famous 19th century poet, Lord Byron. The Banjalang Aboriginal people knew the area as 'cavaba' (in an early map this was spelt 'cavvanba' and, for a brief time, it was known as 'Cavanbah') which some claim means 'meeting place'. Today Byron Bay is sustained by tourism and its associated industries.

The town's name is thought to derive from the language of the Bundjalung people with 'muli' said to mean 'hill'. The full name has been interpreted as meaning 'small round hill' - a reference to Mt Chincogan, beneath which the town is situated. When the railway arrived, dairying and agriculture took off and the town prospered, acquiring its own municipal government in 1908. The fertile river flats and subtropical climate also proved ideal for the cultivation of bananas and other tropical fruits.

Murwillumbah is a substantial centre that is focussed almost entirely on providing services for the surrounding farmlands. The area is particularly rich and consequently is a mixture of cattle and sugar cane. The name Murwillumbah is thought to have come from a local Aboriginal word to describe either a good place for camping beside the river or a good place to catch possums.

Condong, located on the Tweed River north of Murwillumbah, sits in the midst of sugar cane fields and has a working sugar mill as its focal point. The mill commenced operations on 16 August 1880. The last train between Murwillumbah and Condong ran in 1975.