First, does Australia have an Amtrak equivilant. The reason I ask is because I saw several videos of trains in Australia with company painted passenger cars behind the engines. It reminded me of those passenger/ freight mixtures American railroads did in the late 60s. Is this the case, or are those office cars?
Also, in the US, as I understand it, builders offer locomotive models for railroads to choose from. From what i could tell from the small amount of research I have done, however, it looks like in Australia, companies custom order. Is this true?
Lastly, do they use the same gauge as the United States. And are the laws and accessories on locomotives pretty much the same?
If anyone can ansewer any of these questons, I would appreciate it.
In the video you mention, the car is a crew car. These are retired passenger cars used to carry locomotive crews to allow crews to be changed at appropriate times for hours of duty. They carry sleeping compartments, kitchens for meal preparation and lounge areas.
There is no equivalent of Amtrak in Australia. The transcontinental trains are run by Great Southern Railway. On the east coast, trains are run by Countrylink (Melbourne Victoria to Brisbane Queensland) and by Queensland Rail north of Brisbane.
Commuter trains are generally run directly by the state governments.
There are three gauges in Australia. Standard Gauge, the same as in the USA, 5’3" gauge (as used in Ireland and Brazil) and 3’6" gauge (as used in southern Afric
Having lived in Melbourne from 1999 to 2004, I am a bit familiar with Australian passenger trains. I have ridden on most of the trains mentioned above. I enjoyed them all, but the most interesting train was the Spirit of the Outback, which I rode from Longreach to Brisbane. Not a lot of Americans get to Longreach, which amongst other things is the home of the Qantas Museum.
I would argue that Great Southern Railway’s operations look a bit like Amtrak in that they tie most of Australia’s major cities together, with the exception of Brisbane and Canberra. I have ridden the India Pacific from Sydney to Perth, The Ghan from Adelaide to Alice Springs, and The Overland between Melbourne and Adelaide.
I also have ridden the Tilt Train and the Sunlander between Brisbane and Cairns, as well as the Country Link to and from Sydney and Melbourne. I return to Australia every two years to visit friends. I usually fly to Sydney and take the train to Melbourne. Or as was the case the last time, I flew to Adelaide, and took the train to Melbourne.
The service that I experienced on Great Southern Railway’s trains was head and shoulders above the service I have gotten on Amtrak. If I understand the scheme correctly, Great Southern has a for profit contract with the national government to run its trains in accordance with some tight performance standards. If it fails to meet the standards, it runs the risk of losing the contract, which is subsidized by the national government. If I were in charge, I would break Amtrak apart, and use the great Southern Railways model for passenger rail in the U.S., except I would not subsidize the long distance trains.
There is a town in one of the southern states were RRs of all 3 gauges converge. Some of the cars just get switched over from trucks of one gauge to another gauge truck to continue to their destination. My bus went through that town on an outback tour in 1985, but I met my first girlfriend on that bus trip and slept on the bus during the daytime and missed going through that town. Oh well. When I was there in 1985 they had a lot of EMD derived engines, but they looked different on the outside.
If I remember correctly, before the standard guage was pushed through to Melbourne, passengers had to change trains at Albury/Wodonga. Albury is in New South Wales, whilst Wodonga is in Victoria. They are twin cities separated by the Murray River. I don’t remember whether the change was made on the New South Wales or Victoria side of the river. However, the requirement to change trains or change the boggies was eliminated when the standard gauge was completed to Melbourne and Adelaide. Memory tells me that the through line was completed in the late 80s or early 90s, but I am not at all sure about the dates.
As another poster, who may be Australian, noted, the V-Line, which is the 5’3" line in Victoria, does not haul much if any interstate freight these days. Probably 99% of the freight to and from New South Wales and South Australia goes on the standard gauge trains.
There were three towns in the state of South Australia that had three gauges…
Port Pirie, between 1937 when the broad gauge connection was made to Adelaide and 1970 when the line to Broken Hill was converted from 3’6" to standard gauge.
Peterborough and Gladstone, both between Port Pirie and Broken Hill, retained narrow gauge branch lines and gained broad gauge con
Australia has gone to a version of open access with the various states and national government owning the actual right-of-way. There are two major national freight operators (Pacific National and QR National) that operate just about everywhere. There are also several smaller regional and specialized carriers in operation.