and Armidale, the latter being the northernmost extent of service on the line. Until the mid-2000s freight traffic continued to the disused station at Dumaresq which is home to a now-also-disused agricultural fertilizer depot. There is now wire across the corridor at several points between Armidale and Dumaresq, after which the line is closed. A block is placed across the tracks a short distance from Dumaresq, at the 590 kilometre mark. North of Glen Innes the line, and particularly its bridges, have fallen into disrepair. In December 1991 the line was severed when the Roads & Traffic Authority built a deviation of the New England Highway over the line at Bluff Rock south of Tenterfield. At Wallangarra, the line met Queensland Railways' Southern railway line. History The Main North line, formerly known as the Great Northern Railway (GNR), was the original mainline between Sydney and Brisbane. The first section of the Main North line was built in 1857 from the port of Newcastle to East Maitland as the Hunter River Railway Company'''s line."The Great Northern Railway Newcastle to Maitland 150 Years On", Walters, Chris Australian Railway History March 2007 pp83-113 The line was then extended to Victoria Street, Maitland in 1858. It was extended to Singleton in 1863, Muswellbrook in 1869, Scone in 1871 and Murrurundi in 1872. The GNR was then extended beyond Scone to Werris Creek and West Tamworth in 1878, Armidale in 1883, and reached the Queensland border at Wallangarra in 1888. The North Coast line to Brisbane, via the North Coast was opened in stages between 1905 and 1930, but a ferry carried trains across the Clarence River until the Grafton Bridge was completed in 1932. The Newcastle rail network remained independent of the main network radiating from Sydney until 1889, when the line between Sydney and Newcastle was completed with the opening of the Hawkesbury River Railway Bridge. Thus Newcastle was connected by rail with Wallangarra before it was connected with Sydney, such was the difficulty and expense of reaching and bridging the Hawkesbury River. The Sydney to Newcastle section, Homebush to Waratah, had difficult topography to overcome, including crossing the Hawkesbury River, traversing the Mullet Creek bank and constructing the Woy Woy Tunnel. From the south, the line was opened between Homebush and Hornsby in 1886, then extended to Hawkesbury River in 1887. From the north, the line opened between Waratah and Gosford in