Re: Goodbye Overland

[Dion Williams <onamission@start.com.au>]

Michael Kurkowski wrote:

> There still needs to be a rail alternative for between Melbourne and
> Adelaide. How far fetched would it sound to re-instate broad guage between
> Melbourne and Adelaide, either a) solely broad guage b) dual guage all the
> way. Run the overland via Ballarat once again, stopping at some/all of the
> more major cities once again. Doesn't most or all freight get re-marshalled
> in Melbourne and Adelaide anyway?
> 
> Running the Overland via Brooklyn then Geelong is what I see is killing it.
> You are adding hours for no reason whatsoever. My thoughts originally, were
> to run standard guage from Ararat to Ballarat, then dual-guage Ballarat-
> Melbourne (with enough crossing loops between Melbourne and Ballarat on
> both guages, surely you wouldn't affect passenger services too much...
> would you?)

Problem with this is that it's very hard to justify even a medium sized
project like that for a two-trains-a-day non-freight service. It's
losing money as it is.

> >Seems like an XPT would be ideal for it, times would easily be cut to
> >less than 10 hours; even with day and night services it leaves plenty of
> >maintenance time. If Countrylink go ahead with purchasing tilt trains in
> >the next few years they'd no doubt have the inside running.
> 
> An XPT would die in the Adelaide Hills. At least while geared for 160kph
> which is what they are designed to do. Take them back to 130kph and they
> might do fine. I'll let someone else do their sums here, my maths suck(tm).

Might dent its "high speed" status a bit but the time savings would
still be huge. In terms of convenience, maintenance flexibility and
appeal to the public IMO it's a good fit. I remember reading about a
project to take the line north to avoid the steepest grades east of
Adelaide. Anyone know what happened to it?

Dion