Leigh Creek Coal, page-12

It doesn't give me any jollies to correct people here. I just feel that accurate information is better than inaccurate. So:
it is inaccurate to say that the Leigh Creek Railway was built as a dedicated standard gauge line for coal. The standard gauge from Port Augusta originally went all the way to Maree. Other traffic on the line from the start would have been:
1.Passengers and freight going to Oodnadatta and Alice Springs. All of this would have changed trains to Commonwealth Railways 3' 6" gauge at Maree. There was no other rail connection to The Alice until the 1980s
2. Livestock coming off the Birdsville Track and loaded at Maree. I don't know how much this amounted to in practice, but it was said to be a major reason for extending the Standard Gauge to Maree.
3. Local passengers and freight [other than coal] going to points between Port Augusta and Maree.
Once the Standard Gauge line to Alice Springs via Tarcoola opened, all the traffic went that way. The cattle trade wasn't enough to keep the railway open to Maree on its own, so the railway truncated back to the coalfield.
If you know about the local smells and office hours etc, it stands to reason that you must live out that way. We all look forward to seeing your happy snaps of the disused coal railway's current condition.

PS Until the 1960s there was a gasworks in Broken Hill producing town gas, aka syngas, put into pipes under the streets for residential and small industrial use.. It would have railed in coal for that process from somewhere. My wild guess, with no substantiating evidence, is that it probably came from the Lithgow area.