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Rail transport in Australia

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Rail transport in Australia is large, comprising a total of 33,819 km (2,540 km electrified) of track. Rail transport started in the various colonies at different dates (see timeline below). Because privately owned railways started the first lines, they struggled to succeed on a remote, huge, and sparsely populated continent. Government railways took over most private lines before long. Although the various colonies had been advised by London to choose a common gauge, the colonies ended up with different gauges. This gauge chaos has been only partly fixed in the 21st century.

History

Main article: History of rail transport in Australia

The first attempts to build railways in Australia were by private companies, based in the extant colonies of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. The first line opened in South Australia in 1854 as a horse-drawn line, while the first steam-powered line opened in Victoria in 1854. The private companies soon got into the financial trouble, and were taken over by the respective Governments, as railway development was in the public interest. Despite advice from London to adopt a uniform gauge, should the lines of the various states ever meet, different gauges (see track type) were adopted in different states and indeed within states, which has caused problems ever since.

19th century to early 20th century

In the 1890s, talk was all about federation of the six colonies into a unified nation. One of the points of discussion was the extent that railways would be a federal responsibility. A vote to make it so was lost narrowly, instead the new constitution allows federal takeover of a state railway with approval of that state, and federal construction of federal railways also with approval of that state.

Electrification began in the early 20th century and lines in four states were electrified:

Later 20th century developments

Attempts to fix the gauge problem are ongoing and by no means completely unified even as of 2005. For example, the Servicetown to Mt. Gambier line is isolated by gauge and of no operational value. The various governments and private interests squabble about who should pay to fix it.

While the national government has poured vast sums of money into roads, because the railways were state operations, the national governments have "poured" only small sums into rail, mainly the gauge standardisation works of the Wentworth plan, and the One National works. Recognising that the road/rail situation is unbalanced, the Auslink plan was introduced to allow rail to gain access to funds on a similar basis to that of roads.

Timeline

Track route km

National rail services

The interstate mainline tracks are either owned or managed by the Commonwealth government through the Australian Rail Track Corporation Ltd, whose role it is to maintain the tracks and support their use by transport operators.

The Great Southern Railway, owned by Serco Asia Pacific, operates three passenger trains [1]:

New South Wales government-owned CountryLink passenger services link Brisbane, Canberra and Melbourne via Sydney. Since the extension of the Ghan from Alice Springs to Darwin was completed in 2004, all mainland Australian capital cities are linked by standard gauge rail, for the first time.

Pacific National is Australia's largest private rail freight business, operating in all states and the Northern Territory. It is a 50/50 joint venture owned by Toll Holdings and Patrick Corporation.

State and city rail services

All rail freight operators in New South Wales have been privately owned since 2002. The Rail Infrastructure Corporation is responsible for the development and maintenance of tracks, overhead wiring, etc.

Private railways

Tramways with 610mm gauge for the transport of sugar cane have always been operated as private concerns associated with the relevant sugar can mill.

Four isolated heavy duty railways for the cartage of iron ore in the Pilbara region of northwest Western Australia have always been private concerns operated as part of the production line between mine and port. These lines have pushed the limit of the wheel to rail interface which has led to much useful research of value to railways worldwide.

In 2005, a fifth iron ore line has been proposed to the port of North Geraldton, and this will have open access to any iron ore mine wishing to use it.

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