…Hey, that’s cheating, but we’ll accept that.
I keep meaning to put on a long telephoto and take the moon as it rises (but I usually see such a moon when driving up to Sydney in the evening, and I’m never in the right place at the right time).
The Sydney Harbour Bridge always had steps, ladders and railings dating back to the construction. There is even a rack railway on the upper chord, with an electrically driven crane which was used for construction. I’m told that it runs very, very slowly! No, I don’t know the gauge, but it’s probably less than standard. The bridge was built with four standard gauge tracks, two each side of six road lanes, but two were replaced by road lanes after being used for streetcars for about thirty years.
Outside my window right now is a Royal Australian Air Force band practicing for a ceremonial welcome for someone.
Peter
All interesting. At least the planners made the bridge adequate in capacity…Enjoy the music…Bet that sounds great. [8D]
Guys,
Hot News:
In the latest (April 2004) edition of the Australian monthly “Railway Digest”, on page 4 it is reported that a 130 km line will be built from Wandoan to Theodore in (southern) central Queensland. This will provide a connection that will form a link in a line from Melbourne (Victoria) to Gladstone (Queensland). Sadly there are other gaps yet to be filled, and parts of the current track are both narrow (3"6") and standard gauges.
This line will be built using dual gauge concrete ties, however, allowing quick and cheap conversion to standard gauge.
The line will initially serve narrow gauge coal trains to the export port at Gladstone, using the Moura short line, one of the lines built in the 1960s that was originally intended to be standard gauge.
The line will be built by the “Australian Transport and Energy Corridor (ATEC)” and is intended to form part of a line extending to Tennant Creek on the Alice Springs to Darwin line, the new line to be called the “Australian Inland Rail Expressway”.
Now, I’m more than a little sceptical about the chances of all of this happening, the chances of a snowball in Hell come to mind. But at least the option to convert will be there.
Now, if we can convince the Victorian government that passenger trains should be standard gauge…
Peter
Hey Peter
re: “… that a 130 km line will be built from Wandoan to Theodore in (southern) central Queensland…” will that mean a connection to the Brisbane to Charleville line via the existing branch to Wandoan, or, does it corss over the Charleville line on another alignment?
Kozzie
Dave
(Kozzie)
…It sure is interesting to hear Australia [any nation], is building railroads.
Kozzie…That big beautiful full moon [minus one day], is just now rising and it will be as pretty as it was last night…So you fellows didn’t use it all up yet.
Dave,
It connects with the branch to Wandoan from Miles on the Charleville line, and with the remains of the Dawson Valley line at Theodore to connect to the Moura line at the North end.
Separately, another line is being built from Rangan on the Central line to Rolleston, but that will be narrow gauge only (they haven’t really caught on to the possibilities yet).
Peter
Hey Modelcar! [:)] We Aussies aren’t greedy are we Peter? [(-D][(-D][(-D]
Enjoy the moon. We’ve now got cloudy weather down here in Brisbane, so we won’t see much tonight. [V]…hmmmm you didn’t send the clouds did you modelcar?
…no…I’m casting nasturtiums here… ha ha [:D]
Cheers
Dave
(Kozzie)
It was cloudy here last night, but I did see the moon briefly.
We had nasturtiums in the garden when I was very young, and I remember eating the leaves. They had quite an interesting taste!
Peter
Kozzie and Pete: This was an interesting discussion. I’m going to print it out for reference.
I think I saw a picture of track in Australia with 4 different gauges. Can you tell me where it might be?
We had similar problems in Canada, but not to the same extent. Ontario decreed that any lines that wanted a provincial subsidy had to be built to Ontario gauge (forget what it was - 5’ or 5’3" maybe.) Something to do with protecting trade. Most of them were converted to standard very quickly.
A lot of N.A. streetcar (tram) systems were constructed to non-standard gauge. This was explained as preventing the running of freight trains down the streets. Toronto gauge was 4’ 10 7/8", which is only a hair off of 1.5 meters, although it’s now quoted as 1495 mm. The downtown lines were built to this, while the suburban lines were built to standard. The suburban lines were either converted or abandoned. There’s a story of suburban cars being run very carefully into the city one one rail and the flange of the other rail.
The province of Newfoundland had a 42" gauge system. They ran mainland cars by changing the trucks over. Don’t think the Nfld cars ever ran on the mainland.
(I need to look up some details before tomorrow night.)
David,
I think what you may have seen was photo of a stretch of track in South Australia where three gauges were provided with four rails to allow for some specific junctions to be arranged. If my memory is correct, there was a 3’6" pair of rails in the centre, with an additional rail on one side for 5’3" and one on the other side for standard. This avoided having three rails almost touching eachother on one side, which made spiking it down a bit difficult. The two outside rails did make extracting a single gauge to go in a particular direction easier, but needed much more clearance space! There was a fourth “gauge” using the outer two rails which was never used.
As I mentioned earlier, special arrangements were made for turntables in roundhouses, that had six specially machined rails so that the locomotives were central on each gauge.
However, at Tailem Bend, when the main line was converted to standard gauge in 1995, a turntable was converted by adding a third rail, and some juggling was required to get standard gauge locomotives on and off, some angular misalignment being accepted. The broad gauge lines there were isolated, and were converted to standard soon after that, but I’ll bet the turntable is still dual gauge!
Sometimes, with broad and standard gauge lines, it is convenient to move the third rail from one side to another, to keep the pointwork as simple as possible. One of these strange little crossovers was located near the buffers on platform 2 of Spencer St Station in Melbourne. It had worked well for thirty years or so, the civil engineers having removed a small arc from the platform face to allow the throw at the end of standard gauge vehicles as they ran through.
In 1992, the preserved 4-6-2 3801 ran, reasonably slowly through the “crossover” and they discovered that the little arc cut out wasn’t big enough to clear the outside cylinders of a steam locomotive. There were red faces all around, but only the lagging sheets were damaged
That’s pretty incredible about how a new line was built to the north coast from Alice Springs. The word “finally!” comes to mind. I’m from America but I have a great interest in Australia, seeing as how I used to have an email relationship with a girl from Melbourne, plus it seems like a very fascinating country, like America with an edge. 
Heh, we Americans have a rail network running around our outer perimeters, along both coasts and the Canadian and Mexican borders. You Ozzies don’t think you’ll ever try something like that; maybe build a link from Darwin to Brisbane or link the Hamersley Iron lines to Perth? (It could provide a more convenient tourist link to the Kimberley and Top End, and perhaps cut down on shipping Hamersley ore to Perth and the east coast.)
Dang, you guys must feel like Cecil Rhodes when he first proposed the Cape-to-Cairo line in Africa (which still has yet to be completed, hint hint…)
Andyjay,
The Darwin link was expected about twenty years ago, when the standard gauge reached Alice Springs. The Federal government just decided against it on a cost basis. The current line was built to lighter standards than was proposed in the 1980s. But it will almost certainly be successful commercially.
The “Inland Rail Expressway”, mentioned earlier is intended to link Queensland to Darwin via Mount Isa and Tennant Creek, and this is the most likely of the possible major links, but I’m not holding my breath until they start that link, let alone finish it.
The Pilbara lines are basically exporting to Japan and China, with some to Europe. There are only two steel plants in the the South and East, and the occasional iron ore carrier will take a load to Whyalla or Port Kembla, but Whyalla has its own mines with a 3’6" network (but a standard gauge system for the steelworks itself). Port Kembla brings all its ore in by sea. So I don’t expect a connection to Perth. The nearest lines, at Geraldton, are 3’6" anyway. A connection by rail would be good for tourism and would reduce costs in the North West. The existing lines there will probably connect between the Western (Pilbara Rail) and Eastern (BHP Billiton) systems. The gap may be a few kilometres now.
A major difference from Africa is that Australia is a single country, with far fewer people. The rail systems might have been built by competing national governments, but we are slowly getting our act together. I’m not sure that recent privatisation has helped standardisation much, but I’ll wait and see.
Peter
Peter:
I think we call the track that takes you from one side to the other a “swish” or “swoosh”. (senior’s moment?) One of my friends had a layout with HO and HOn3 and he had at least 2. One of them was in a reverse loop.
Kozzie…Peter: One side question…Have either one of you tried to pull up a satellite photo of your 300 mi. of tangent track across Australia…Such as Teraserver.com or possibly it’s not available in your country…'We can do that here just about any location in the states…A great way to see special rail routes in mountains, etc…[:)]
Iraq’s gague is 4ft. 8.5 In Interasting
DOGGY
Modelcar,
No I’ve never tried to look up satellite photos, but I think the track nearer my home through the mountains would be more interesting than the straight. You would need a pretty high resolution in the images, but it would be interesting. Sometimes it’s a help to know the alignment of a piece of track just to predict the light for photography.
Doggy,
Yes, Iraq was at one time connected to Europe by rail, through Turkey, (although they needed a train ferry across the Bosphorus at Istanbul). They have a number of Chinese diesel locomotives in Iraq, so the clearances might allow US locomotives, but the track might not take US axle loads. Bachmann already make the Chinese DF4B locomotive in HO gauge, for those wanting to model Iraq!
Peter
Peter: Since I wrote the above I went over to Teraserver.com and found they have changed the program considerably. It used to be free and one could zero in on almost any location in the States and with a resolution down to about 1 meter…That brings it down to where one can see your car in the driveway, etc…very easy. I found my home here in Indiana and also the condo we stayed at down in Florida and looked at many famous locations here in this country…Such as Horseshoe Curve in Pennsylvania…The tunnels and the lead in to them on the Pennsylvania Turnpike…and many others. It was great.
I even followed the abandoned Western Maryland RR in Pennsylvania and followed it as it crossed the Alleghney Mountains…tunnel and all…It took me about an hour and a half to follow it across the mountain…That is, moving from picture frame to picture frame until I was finished…
To Peter and the other Australians:
It appears to me that the broad gauge in Victoria is slowly disappearing since most of the main lines have been converted to standard or dual-gauge but that the narrow gauge in Queensland and Western Australia is surviving because each is a pretty substantial network in its own right. Is this a fair assessment from an American who is 10,000 miles away?