Don River Railway
Don River Railway Museum in 2016
Locale	Devonport, Tasmania
Coordinates	41°10′52″S 146°19′05″E / 41.18103°S 146.31814°E / -41.18103; 146.31814
Connections	Western Line
Commercial operations
Name	Don River Railway
Original gauge	1,067 mm (3 ft 6 in)
Preserved operations
Owned by	Van Diemen Light Railway Society
Operated by	Van Diemen Light Railway Society
Stations	2
Length	3.1 km (1.9 mi)
Preserved gauge	1,067 mm (3 ft 6 in)
Commercial history
Opened	10 April 1916 (1916-04-10)
Closed	16 October 1963 (1963-10-16)
Website
www.donriverrailway.com.au
Route map Legend Don Junction Don Fitzallen Tugrah Melrose Talba Paloona Barrington

The Don River Railway is a volunteer-run vintage railway and museum in Don, a suburb of Devonport, Tasmania. It provides a passenger train ride from Don to Coles Beach (operationally known as Don Junction) and return. The current line follows a reconstructed section of the former Melrose line that ran between Don Junction and Paloona.

The Don River Railway is open seven days a week, closing only for Christmas Day, Good Friday, and Anzac Day. Train services operate from Thursday to Sunday, using either either a 1940s ex-Tasmanian Government Railways DP rail car, or a heritage carriage set hauled by either a steam locomotive or a vintage diesel locomotive.

The heritage operations consist of the northernmost stretch of the Melrose Line. The Melrose Line ran from Don Junction (commonly called Coles Beach) to Melrose and Paloona. In the 1920s, the line was extended to Barrington, but this closed in 1928. Occasional trains ran on the closed section on Devonport Cup and Show days, but this ceased in 1935. The Melrose-Paloona section closed around this time, and following the 1948 closure of the Broken Hill Propiertary company's limestone facilities at Melrose, which had been the mainstay of operations on the line ever since it opened, the line was largely redundant. In 1963, the railway was fully closed and lifted thereafter.

In 1973 the Van Dieman Light Rail Society began pushing to restore heritage operation, which it did three years later operated, under the trading name Don River Railway. The company used to run mainline heritage operations from Don Village and their Inveresk workshops prior to the 2004 removal of all T&H services from Tasmania's mainline. The service survived throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, opening the Two Tracks function centre in 2020. On 4 April 2023, a fire destroyed a carriage shed and some carriages.^[1][2]

Fowler no.5268 is Don River Rail's sole operating steam locomotive as of December 2024, seeing occasional use both on timetabled services and for functions.

Former Tasmanian Government Railways Pacific-type locomotive M4 is currently receiving mechanical overhall. CCS 25 was reactivated in January 2023, but awaits approval to return to revenue operations.

• "Don River Railway". heritage.gov.au. AHPI. Archived from the original on 19 August 2014. Retrieved 18 August 2014.
• Cooper, Greg (ca.2002) The History of the Don River Railway's Locomotives, Railcars & Carriages, published by the Don River Railway, ISBN 0-9580006-0-3
• McKillop, Robert (2010) Australian Railway Heritage Guide, 2010 Edition, Australian Railway Historical Society (New South Wales Division), ISBN 978-0-9807721-1-1

Media related to Don River Railway at Wikimedia Commons