Thread: Electric Freight Trains

Pacific National warns NSW on Port Botany rail link


By: Rob McKay Date: 17.06.2019

https://www.fullyloaded.com.au/logistics-news/1906/pacific-national-warns-nsw-on-port-botany-rail-link

Another one:

Originally Posted by JDNSW

Parkes, actually - Lithgow is not on the Inland Rail. But essentially it is intended primarily as a bypass to Sydney for traffic that is Melbourne-Brisbane, Perth-Brisbane, and probably to some extent Perth -Melbourne.

Thanks. Maybe it was Ipswich I was thinking of.

Originally Posted by DiscoMick

Gas, not coal, for electricity. Lots of gas in Queensland and plenty of sunshine.
Building a new inland line to the latest standards should be much cheaper than mucking about on the coast.

I thought gas fired electricity is way more expensive than coal and not a great deal better for the environment.

Originally Posted by JDNSW

Undoubtedly - but that means no access to Melbourne, Sydney or Brisbane, all of which are on the coast, and for all of them, the cost of land acquisition means using the existing rail corridors.

Worth pointing out as well that while the Inland Rail from Melbourne to Brisbane is using some new corridors, for most of the distance it is using existing rail corridors, and often existing track. And some of the delays in construction can be attributed to problems with establishing new corridors, especially in the NSW Central West and Qld Darling Downs. (Local politics and NIMBY!)

Hi John, in the sections I’ve been involved with (more so visited for a few hours here and there) they are ripping up 100% of the original and starting from scratch.

Funny about 18 years ago I was asked to urgently advise on the possibility of linking lots of old tracks to make an inland corridor.
I might add I know very little about railways.
I found that there are several old unused lines that could be linked.
one was the capertee line up to the Hunter Valley. But a big problem then was the congestion on the Hunter line and getting over the mountains with a fully loaded train.
There was another private proposal for an inland air rail interchange at Parkes and oldies may remember a Jumbo did a low pass over the airport. I think Lindsay Fox was pushing it.

The main problem with all this IMHO has not really changed. Each state has little buy in to the projects as they see little benefit to their state. NSW used to lose complete trains sometimes when Ford used rail to Queensland and you should have seen the cars when they had been stuck in Western Sydney for a few days. We started using road transport because of the damage and also used the Traders when they were going, although after being stuck outside in a cyclone the cars were not pretty.
Queensland is still 3 foot 6 above Brisbane so any freight has to be rebogied or transferred which makes it too expensive.
Probably why the Vics didn’t give a stuff about the XPT line as it is sytandard gauge.
regards PhilipA

I spoke to my civil engineer son today. He is a senior professional engineer with a North Sydney firm. His team designs and supervises construction of bridges, tunnels, concrete and marine structures. He confirmed that when designing new works around or over or under rail lines in NSW they have to take into account that trains may be carrying double deck containers in the future. Next year? 5, 10, 50 years? Never? Other future requirements are that curve radii will be increased to allow longer wagons, heavier trains, faster trains. In many places this track work will mean platforms will need to be cut back or closed. The track reserve will be wider. The loading gauge may change to allow larger loading.

Qld. Railways state that the largest coal trains on the electrified Central Queensland coal train network is 25,000 tonnes and 4.5 kilometres long. Freight on the North Coast Line as far as Rockhampton is electric hauled. QR unhooks the electric locos at Rocky and the train is hauled to Cairns by diesel locos. QR had to buy new bigger diesels to do the same work as the electrics and avoid having to split the trains in two. No current plans to electrify the NCL north of Rocky. Small population and freight volumes do not justify the cost.

Originally Posted by PhilipA

NSW used to lose complete trains sometimes when Ford used rail to Queensland and you should have seen the cars when they had been stuck in Western Sydney for a few days.
regards PhilipA

At Leyland Truck and Bus we used QR quite a bit to send ag. tractors and Land Rovers to country dealers. QR was cheap and so are car dealers. What annoyed me was that QR could not find a missing wagon unless you, the customer, could tell them their wagon number. I never had one completely disappear but not uncommon for one to go AWL for weeks then just turn up out of the blue. They delivered vehicles to wrong destinations in spite of the address being written in large print on the windscreen. The Rocky dealer 'phoned me once to tell me they had taken a LR into protective custody as QR staff did not seem to know what to do with it. It had been despatched to the Townsville dealer which was written large on the windscreen. QR unloaded it in Rocky and told the local dealer their car had arrived. "What car" says Rocky dealer "I am not expecting a car". "It must be yours. You are the dealer". I 'phoned Townsville and asked if they wanted it put back on rail. "Christ, no" says he "the buggers will only lose it again. I'll send a driver down". They once delivered a LR sent to the Cloncurry dealer to the Mt. Isa dealer. This cunning devil promptly sold it and awaited developments. Naughty!