Australia's biggest bain was stubborn states


G'day all ..Until not too long ago we had a variety of different gauges of track in Australia . There are still a few places that do use narrow gauge but these are for specific use such as the sugar trains in Queensland, scenic rail here and there and in Tasmania (my home State) which is an island separated by 240 km or 150 miles of water with no rail link anyway . We use 1067 mm or 3' 6" mainline to this day . This old clip made a very long time ago shows an interstate frustration that existed for a few more decades after it was made because States took their own sweet time sorting it out..
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Queensland is still 3'6" as well Rod. There were proposals near the end of the last Century to build a new main line alongside or on a new route to the north, because it was said the current tracks (mostly single with some double) would be overloaded by 2016, but that seems to have come to naught. Whether that would have been standard gauge is moot, but it does seem ridiculous that we still have to interchange containers at the Port of Brisbane for freight coming up on NSW's standard gauge to our 3'6", and vise-versa. Passenger travel is still catered for to the south, interchanging at Brisbane's Roma Street station.
 
Queensland is still 3'6" as well Rod. There were proposals near the end of the last Century to build a new main line alongside or on a new route to the north, because it was said the current tracks (mostly single with some double) would be overloaded by 2016, but that seems to have come to naught. Whether that would have been standard gauge is moot, but it does seem ridiculous that we still have to interchange containers at the Port of Brisbane for freight coming up on NSW's standard gauge to our 3'6", and vise-versa. Passenger travel is still catered for to the south, interchanging at Brisbane's Roma Street station.
G'day Toot , I could have sworn that QR switched over about 20-25 years ago ...Sorry about that ..And I thought it used to be broad gauge at one time . I know Victoria , NSW , South Australia and Western Australia were always grizzling about switching trains all the time .. Yet another thing then that Tassie and Queensland have in common then . Good to hear from you again ...Been a while ..
 
Oh yes, I'm still here, holding the Fort, Tony (Wombat) has wandered in and out, had some problems and had to sell off his G scale and HO stuff. Came back and was (is?) building an N scale layout, but not posted in quite a while. I'm the tragic.

I'm pretty sure WA'a state railways are also 3'6", not including the mining companies of course, they ride on some of the heaviest rails in the world. Rio Tinto now operates driverless trains. Getting that done cost over $940million, going over budget by 80%. I did help Tony find a guy over there that made resin kits for the iron ore hoppers that BHP uses, through the club in Perth. I found some pics on the "net" of where the 3 gauges in SA all came together and posted them up on here. They had 3'6", 4'8-1/2" and 5'3" all in the one state.

You probably thought we went to standard gauge when you got all those locos from us. That only happened when the cash strapped state Govt, sold of all the rail freight handling and only kept the passenger going. QR National, which had freight leases and locos working Australia wide, was the only part doing well. Got taken over by Aurizon and now maybe Pacific National. I did read that they were competitors here but Aurizon wanted to sell off it's holdings to PN in Qld, but the ACCC was objecting to there being no competition if that happened. I haven't seen any of the former's engines in a while.
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