The Emu Park Museum also houses many historical relics of the rail line that helped make the remote southern communities of the Capricorn Coast more accessible to the public.
Passenger trains ceased running to Mount Chalmers, Cawarral, and Yeppoon in 2000 with the advent much-improved roads to Rockhampton. Viability of the line was further limited due to downsizing of local pineapple production, and an increased use of road freight. In 2004, the trains stopped running and over the next four years the tracks were removed. In 2008, the Yeppoon Railway Station was placed on the permanent heritage register by the Queensland Heritage Council. It is one of the very few railway terminal stations remaining on the Queensland coast, and the building is still in excellent condition.
In 2012, dialogue began between community groups and Rockhampton Regional Council to convert the track formerly occupied by the Yeppoon line into a cycling and hiking trail.
Yeppoon Sugar Company
The history of the sugar industry on the Capricorn Coast was a short one, commencing in 1883 and ending twenty years later, but its effects still linger today. It is only in recent decades as society has become more liberal, that records, stories, and photographs of that era have come under public scrutiny.
The Yeppoon Sugar Company was the brainchild of William Broome who had property a few kilometres north of Yeppoon. Needing investors, he floated the company in 1883, and a crushing mill was subsequently built at Farnborough. The mill relied on other people to do the growing, but sugar was a premium commodity of the day, and landowners followed Broome�s lead. Soon there were sugar cane plantations at Farnborough, Cawarral, and Joskeleigh.
The crops on his Woodlands Estate property however yielded poor to fair crops. In Yeppoon, Robert Ross of Taranganba Gold Scandal infamy also grew a crop and encouraged others to follow. Ross was also a shareholder in the mill
