For those interested in new railway construction projects, look here…
The railway is one of the few new rail projects in this country in the last 50 years. But it’s a big project!!!
I still think the Australian government would be better off building a high speed rail link between Sydney and Melbourne. There ain’t much out there in the outback.
There will be when they get it finished.
There wasnt much west of the mississippi at one time, except empty land.
Stay Frosty,
Ed
I know a little bit about Australian history, thanks to my Aunt Clara. Similar to Canada and its western provinces, a transcontintal railroad was built in Australia along its southern coast to Perth. Otherwise, the state of Western Australia would not have joined the Dominion of Australia.
It wasn’t much later that a line was built to Alice Springs from Adelaide. During World War II, General Douglas MacArthur took that train, as he was not fond of airplanes. The train he took averaged less than 20 mph, as the line was in very poor shape. However, recently the railroad line has been moved east and rebuilt, so that it doesn’t flood in Lake Erye, which is dry most of the time…
This line is not being built for freight traffic. There isn’t much out in the outback. This line is being built from Alice Springs to Darwin for national defense. Australia Pillabra, its rich resources of iron ore is on its northwest coast, and two railroads were built in the late 1960s to serve the mines directly with short lines to the coast.
Practically every year America and Australia’s armed forces hold an exercise with the Aussies attempting to hold its iron ore resources. Iron is to Australia as oil is to the Middle East. Australia is hard put to defend this resource, because its a long way from its airforce, naval, and army bases located on its east coast.
And without a railroad, its difficult to move its armor forces to defend the northwest region. Its naval forces could take over a week to reach the area. While the Pillabra is still vulnerable, at least with this new rail line to Darwin, Australia will be able to defend Darwin better…
Yes, the states just west of the Mississippi River grew, along the Missouri and Arkansas River valleyd,but a lot of them further west have not grown much. Much of central Australia is desert, similar to Utah and Nevada than Iowa or Arkansas…
I agree there is little north of Alice Springs, but the railroad is being built as a land bridge to speed up the movement of Asian cargo to the rest of Australia.
Actually the federal government of Australia doesn’t own its railroads, up until recently they were owned by the individual states; some may have been privatized. The fact that the individual states built their own railroads is the reason why no two states had the same track gauge. Standard gauge trackage is now in place between most of the major cities of Australia.
As for high speed rail between Sydney and Melbourne there is little in the way of population or ridership between the two cities to make such an undertaking viable. Sydney and Melbourne are 600 miles away from each other so a portal-portal 150 mph average speed trip by train would not be competitive with flying timewise.
Still have that funny feeling that where the railroad goes, so will people. Look at the American desert, who in their right mind would settle in El Paso, unless the railroad had brough commerce to the area? I know the desert in Australia is much more severe than far West Texas, but there are people there, and the Web Page for ADRail seem to indicate that freight is formost, then passenger service, depending upon start up ridership. And I would bet some one will find something (beside iron) out there that needs a railroad.
Either way, I can see only good things coming out of it.
Stay Frosty,
Ed
Four hours might not outfly a jet, but four hours is not too long a train trip. When traveling on a train, one can get up and walk through the cars.
Frankly, with all of the opposition to expanding Sydney’s airport, which went ahead anyway, I seriously doubt whether the authorities could ever expand that airport again, in the middle of Sydney’s southern suburbs.
And there is no talk about building another airport at Sydney. It seems many major airports around the world are in the same situation: they cannot grow to handle the future!
Oh, I am sure the newly rebuilt and new railroad will get some business, especially imports from Asia. Its just that every major Australian city has a seaport. And shipping freight is cheap!