The Folly of the Different Gauges

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

Here’s a story from Downunder for those of you “up Over” folk who liek to read about the RR scene in Oz.

Prior to federation in 1901, the states were previously colonies of great Britain, with their own armed forces, Customs, currency etc etc. So when it came to building railways in the 1800s, with much short-sightedness, each of the colonies decided what gauge they would build their own railway, with no regard to connecting to other colonies on the same continent! What a joke!

So we had:

Standard gauge 4’ 8&1/2" in New South Wales (most sensible choice really)

Narrow gauge 3’ 6" in Queensland (my state), Western Australia and Tasmania, and

Broad gauge 5’ 3" in Victoria and South Australia…(With two other gauges in SA …Pete - help here please!).

Northern Territory: This is a place where I hope Pete comes in and helps me out…

I know what you’re thinking…what a mess!..as far travelling between the colonies is concerned.

It wasn’t till after federation that common sense finally prevailed, and it was decided to connect the states (formerly colonies) with standard gauge track. All state and territory capitals (except in Tasmania - our island state), are now connected by standard gauge.

Initially, between Sydney (New South Wales) and Melbourne (Victoria) about 50 years ago (?), then in stages, till finally,…after many delays…this year, a trans-continental standard gauge track from Adelaide (South Australia) in the south, up through the middle of the continent through mostly desert, to Darwin (Northern territory) way up in the tropics.

Queensland is the last state to have a state-wide railway system owned by a state government. The others have partly or fully privatised and split up their systems. So Brisbane’s (capital of Queensland and my home town) suburban network is part of Queensland’s state-wide narrow gauge track. Though narrow gauge, it is still

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Please see my reply to a quote on your Favorite pre-Amtrak Train thread.

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Thanks for the info,I read about the new line from Alice Springs to Darwin,that sounds like an interesting trip.Back a long time ago there may have been some 2’ or 2’6’’ track also,maybe it was called the Puffin Billy train. Joe G.

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Guys,

Why do I get the feeling that I’m being set up here?

The problem started right back in the early 1850s, when the railway in Sydney, NSW changed the suggested gauge from 5’3" to standard gauge. the rivalry between the colonies was such that the line in Melbourne, Victoria was built to 5’3". These lines were built in 1854 to 1855.

South Australia also adopted 5’3’’ gauge, from 1856 for lines around Adelaide, and so did Tasmania for lines around Launceston in Northern Tasmania in 1869.

I think Queensland started the narrow gauge of 3’6" in 1865, and this was also adopted later in Western Australia.

Although the original railways in Sydney and Melbourne were private companies, the colonial governments took over operation, and the other colonies started their railways as “state-owned” enterprises.

The problem was that like the roads, the government’s responsibility ended at the colonial (or state, after federation in 1901) border.

South Australia suffered from having a lot of marginal agricultural land, and while they needed railways, they opted to extend the system as narrow gauge 3’6" lines, from quite close to Adelaide to the north. They also built (to 3’6") the North Australia Railway south from Darwin in the Northern Territory, which was administered by South Australia until federation in 1901. This line only reached about one third of the way to Alice Springs, near the centre of Australia, which was its intended destination.

The South Australians did extend the 5’3" lines to the Victorian border, where a through connection was made to Melbourne. This was for many years the only through line between states. This was opened in the late 1880s, and the latest American passenger cars, D’Alton Mann’s “Boudoir Cars” were purchased for the service.

There were breaks of gauge at Albury, on the Murray river, between NSW and Victoria (standard and 5’3" gauge) and Wallan-Garra, on the NSW -Queensland bo

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No Pete, I’m honestly not trying to set you up. Thanks for the details.

I realised that you would have more knowledge on the matter, and I thought that it might be an interesting read, as some of the crew “up over” have expressed interest in Oz RR scene. So I thought that I would get it rolling, and see where it goes!
[:)]

Cheers!

Dave
(Kozzie)

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It really wasn’t much different in the states in the beginning, although a larger percentage went with standard gauge. There was some narrow in the east, and Erie went with 6 foot. Didn’t take too long for them to figure out that 4’8 1/2" was the future.

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OK, time for Episode Three!

We left the Australian Railways in 1962 with a single standard gauge line running into Broad Gauge territory in Victoria. It bypassed the passenger stations and handled through freight and passenger traffic only.

At this stage systems were set up in Melbourne and Albury to change the trucks on freight cars with loading from points on the standard gauge to points on the broad gauge. Cars were marked with an “X” to indicate that they had trucks with fittings suitable for exchange between gauges. This was slow and expensive, but much much faster and cheaper than moving loading between cars.

So freight could now move from anywhere in South Australia or Victoria to anywhere in New South Wales, and to Brisbane in south east Queensland.

In 1965, export of Iron Ore was permitted for the first time, and a number of large standard gauge lines were developed in the Pilbara area in the north west of Western Australia. These were independent, but now have merged into two large systems which are so close that a connection is likely. But this didn’t really influence the railways in the rest of Australia.

But Iron Ore was discovered in Koolyanobbing, between Perth and Kalgoorlie, and a standard gauge line was built to connect this mine to the port at Kwinana south of Perth.
Since this was more than three quarters of the way to Kalgoorlie, it was obvious to continue the line to there connecting with the standard gauge Trans Australian line. This was completed in 1968/69.

Freight could now move from Brisbane to Perth with changes of trucks at Melbourne and Port Pirie, standard to broad gauge and back to standard.

I guess I should point out that exchange of trucks between standard and narrow gauge didn’t occur, because apart from the gauge, the couplers were incompatible, Western Australia using centre buffers (and vacuum brakes) while Queensland used side buffers and screw couplers (but Westinghouse brakes)

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Right, Episode Four, or “The Failure of Common Sense”

Somewhere back there I made post No 200. And I didn’t notice!

Right, we’ve made it to 1970 and nobody else recognised me on the front page of the newspaper, and fast forwarded to the early 1980s when standard gauge reached Adelaide and the world didn’t end, as widely predicted in 1920.

What about Queensland? Nothing changed after 1932. No new standard gauge lines, except for an isolated line hauling bauxite on Cape York (the “pointy bit” up at the top of the map of Australia).

There was a history of lost opportunities in Queensland. The line from Townsville to Mount Isa, right in the middle of Queensland was extensively rebuilt in the very early 1960s, using federal funding intended for rail standardisation. Queensland opposed standard gauge because it would break up the narrow gauge system.

Five years later, a new line was built from Gladstone to Moura for export coal traffic. Although it would have operated independently, the Queensland Government insisted that it be built to narrow gauge rather than standard as the American and Japanese developers building it requested.

Five more years on, another new line from Hay Point, near Mackay was built to narrow gauge. The locomotives on this line were so heavy, they had to run with nearly empty fuel tanks just to meet load limits on the normal main lines. So despite the fact that this was effectively an isolated system, it too was built to narrow gauge.

Development continued, and the lines from Gladstone and Hay point were rebuilt with double track and electrified at 25kV AC. Despite this investment, the opportunity to convert to standard gauge was not taken, although the additional cost would have been quite small.

The main line from Brisbane to Gladstone was rebuilt and electrified. Much of this was on an entirely new alignment, but still narrow gauge. More recently similar rebuilding was extended from Rockhamp

9

Sorry,

I didn’t answer Joseph2’s question about 2’6" gauge in Victoria.

Around 1900, the Victorian Government railways decided to build light branch lines in mountainous country to a narrower gauge, and selected 2’6". Four lines were built in widely separated areas of the state.

One of these was in the Dandenong Range to the east of the capital, Melbourne. This lasted in normal service until the 1950s, by which time the area had become part of the residential suburbs. Pert of the line was converted to 5’3" and electrified for commuter trains, but the remainder has been retained and rebuilt as a tourist attraction. This line is known as “Puffing Billy”.

There are very extensive 2’0" gauge railways in Queensland hauling sugar cane to the sugar mills, and the nearest one of these to Brisbane, Moreton Central mill at Nambour has recently closed. These lines use B-B diesel hydraulic locomotives of 600HP and haul loads in excess of 1000 tonnes, with Willison automatic couplers and concrete ties under the rails. In a few cases, 3’6" branch lines have been relaid to 2’0" to incorporate them into the mill network. Export sugar and molasses is carried on the 3’6" main lines, particularly around Cairns and Townsville.

Peter

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You Aussies have some very interesting geography, history, and trains. The railroads sound like a bit of a mess however. We Americans still can’t figure out how you manage to keep them on the track, when everything is upside down.[D)][(-D][(-D][(-D][swg]

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Guys,

The locomotives aren’t very smart, even the ones with microprocessors, and as long as we let them think that the side with the ground is “down”, they don’t notice anything is wrong!

It works really well, and back in 2000, not even the atheletes at the Olympic games realised in time to take advantage in their pole vaulting, for example. As long as you don’t worry about it, you won’t notice that up and down are reversed.

To stop tourists from thinking about it, we drive our automobiles on the opposite side of the road, and they spend so much time remembering how to make a right turn from (and to) the wrong side of the road.

Despite this, I’m sure that anyone on the forum would enjoy a visit to Australia, and as long as you are careful about the driving on the opposite side, you’ll be very welcome and you’ll never have to think about up and down,

Peter

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AND THE AWARD FOR THE WORLD’S LONGEST FORUM POST IS…DRUMROLL PLEASE…M636C!!!

13

UPTRAIN

I feel I should say a few things in my defence here:

I didn’t start a thread that had a subject so complex that it makes Middle East politics look simple by comparison!

Are we talking about individual posts or my three main ones added together?

Is there any documentary proof of this assertion?

However. I’ll accept any prize that isn’t painful or habit-forming!

Peter

14

Enjoy it all…and on the different gauges, the East Broad Top RR in Pennsylvania still operated at times as a tourist operation…and was a coal hauler years ago…is a 3 ft. line and it used to transport coal to be interchanged with the Pennsylvania RR at Hundington…50 miles or less and there was an exchange of trucks on the coal cars [to standard gauge], to get the loads on the main line of the Pennsy, and off to market, etc…One item from down under that I note with amazement is the fact that people can walk up and over [the top structure], of that large bridge we often see in pictures…I can’t believe they allow the public to take that risk in doing that…!

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Modelcar,

One line that I didn’t mention was an isolated line in North Queensland from Normanton to Croydon. This is run today as a tourist operation, with a small railcar built on an English chassis intended for a double deck bus. Built during the 1930s, this car was kept as an inspection car for the General Manager of the Central lines (from Rockhampton) of Queensland Railways. It has a 102HP Gardner diesel, driving a single rear axle. The front end sits on an arch bar truck. It is too small to carry the traffic, and it hauls much larger aluminium bodied trailers formerly used in Brisbane suburban service.

The track is so light that the lightest modern locomotives were not allowed. The track was built with special deep section steel ties laid directly on (or in) the earth. The theory was that during the frequent floods in that tropical area, the track would survive, and the dead trees and such removed when the water receded, allowing a quick resumption of services. It worked, and the track was retained because it can be brought back more quickly than the road after heavy rain.

It is a tourist attraction, complete with connecting flights at each end to take you the hundreds of miles to the nearest population centres.

The spare locomotive is a six coupled diesel mechanical built to English Drewry Car company design, but fitted with a leading truck to ease the load on the very light track.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge does allow visitors to walk to the top of the arch, but under close supervision, wearing protective clothing, with safety harness, and you are specifically prohibited from taking a camera. This enables the organisers to sell photos taken on the bridge, but does prevent walkers being distracted, and cameras falling on to cars, trains, buses and pedestrians.

My view is, if you can’t take photos, why go?

Peter

16

Thanks for that update Peter…That bridge issue is really surprising. Understand why they don’t want items falling down on cars, etc…Our Matt Lauer from NBC program “the today show” was there several months ago and went to the top of the Sydney bridge and I wondered about that at that time…

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Pete (M636C)

Re your comment:
“I didn’t start a thread that had a subject so complex that it makes Middle East politics look simple by comparison!”

I started the thread knowing that folk like Modelcar enjoy reading about Downunder RRs, and envisaged a precis type summary. However, your details are appreciated. People can read as much or as little as they like - hence the advantage of a Forum. [:)]

Cheers

Kozzie

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…Sure, it’s all great.

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Right now I’m seeing a very pretty full moon out the home office window here and I’m thinking you fellows down under are in full daylight and missing out…but your turn is coming around too…

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Hey Modecar [:)] I reckon we had the full moon last night!

What do you reckon Pete?

So…that means we had it first? ?HA HA[:D]

Keep the humour coming, modelcar - very good! [;)]

Kozzie