The railway station located at Port Pirie South bore the name "Port Pirie" from when it was built in 1876 until it was superseded in 1902 by a passenger station in the centre of Port Pirie. The new station was then assigned the name "Port Pirie railway station" and the original was named Port Pirie South railway station, in keeping with the naming of the adjacent Port Pirie South railway yards. The wooden station building was opened in 1876 at the terminus of the lightly engineered, 1067 mm gauge railway from Port Pirie – then a town of fewer than 1,000 people – into the rich agricultural hinterland of the Mid North. The need was to transport agricultural produce more cheaply to the port for export, mainly to Great Britain, in sailing ships. The following year, Port Pirie's inaugural railway station was opened. A modest weatherboard building, it was placed at the north end of the railway yards, about 250 metres from the town's wharves. In addition to the building there were two locomotive sheds and a freight shed, coaling and watering facilities, a passing loop in front of the station building, and a few sidings. Since the railway was such an advance over horse-drawn wagons or bullock drays over unmade roads, traffic soon increased significantly, especially when in the following year the line reached the nearest town in the hinterland – Gladstone, 52 km east of the port – and, more so, Petersburg, a further 64 km east, in 1881. In the years that followed, more trackage was constructed in the yards to accommodate the increased tonnages and variety of freight. The yards eventually became known as "Port Pirie South Yard", then many years later, "Pirie Main Yard". In 1888, when the railway reached the New South Wales border, 351 km away, it enabled the silver-lead-zinc ore produced at Broken Hill mines to be transported to the port for smelting; the line soon became the most important of the South Australian Railways. This was a vast improvement in the economics and efficiency of transporting this commodity compared with the bullock drays used previously. The first Port Pirie furnaces began operating in 1889. The ore traffic and the smelter were to have a profound effect on the town, turning it from a bustling small port into an industrial city. In 1902, a new station building was opened for passengers and parcels traffic at a more convenient locality in Ellen Street, 750 metres further on in the centre of the town, where track was already laid down the street to the smelters a further 400 metres beyond. The two stations operated concurrently until the inaugural station was closed after the Solomontown station opened, in 1911. Subsequent station : Ellen Street.
