Re: Mexican railway (Melb - Wagga)

["Peter Berrett" <pberrett@optushome.com.au>]

Aren't the Victorian sprinters capable of reasonable speed?

One could take the broad gauge sprinters that go to Albury and regauge them
for standard gauge work. It would be a little bit more fiddly using the
single standard gauge track to Albury for Albury/Wagga services but equally
one is not running services up there every hour. If demand did pick up as a
result of this change one could always regauge one or both of the broad
gauge lines to accommodate the extra traffic.

I dont' know that you have to run at XPT speeds in Victoria to meet a 3.5
hour deadline. To achieve this you need to do Melbourne to Albury in about
2.5 hours

The distance is about 310 kilometres so, assuming you run your Wagga
services express MEL - Albury - Wagga, you have to average about 130 km/h
MEL - ALB which I think is below XPT speeds.

At any rate, even if the service took 4 hours I think that there would still
be interest from the community. A four hour service would allow you to leave
Wagga at 6.00 AM arriving 10.00 AM with a return service departing Melbourne
at 7.00 PM and arriving at Wagga at 11 PM. This would provide adequate time
to go shopping, visit the relatives, go to the footy etc etc

The current XPT service on a Saturday leaves at 02:43 from Wagga. That's
just a bit too early for most people methinks.

If the NSW government can see fit to run a longer service to get from Wagga
to Sydney, it seems logical that a 4 hour service (set at appropriate times
and marketed properly)  to Melbourne would draw bigger numbers particularly
as it would take less time to get there than Sydney and cost less. From the
Victorian Govt's perspective it would encourage NSW people to spend their
$$$ in Victoria.

But get it down to 3.5 hours or even 3 and you'll probably get even more
people. One should of course note that along the way the service should pick
up some Albury passengers for the same reason - namely day visits to
Melbourne..

It is a shame that when the Victorian Govt announced its new high speed
services it didn't factor in a high speed service to Albury. This was
understandable given that Speedrail was tendering for Sydney to Canberra and
this might be extended to Melbourne. Given that the TGV proposal appears
dead in the water, perhaps the Victorian Govt has a contingency plan to
extend its high speed rail system to Albury as well. (It's network will look
rather strange if Wodonga/Albury is not somehow included eventually).

If so then a 3 hour service from Wagga to Melbourne could be a reality in a
few years.


cheers Peter







Maurie Daly <mauried@tpg.com.au> wrote in message
3a066404.33032894@can-news.tpg.com.au">news:3a066404.33032894@can-news.tpg.com.au...
> >Based on the above it seems that an express Melbourne to Albury to Wagga
> >train might be able to do Melbourne to Wagga in around 3 hours 30 minutes
> >(running on the standard gauge track).
> >
> This is a good idea but difficult to implement.
> To get 3.5 hours Melb to Wagga requires running at XPT type speeds
> which means NXP or who ever would need XPT type trains.
> Actually there isnt any major reason why the XPT shouldnt be allowed
> to run at 160 km/h in Victoria, espacially on the 60 kg/m track.
> If the level crossings are the only problem then a simple cheap fix is
> to simply require the XPT to slow down to 130 km/h when it approaches
> a crossing and then speed up after passing it , ie merely requires the
> addition of a special XPT type speed board which is what Countrylink
> did for the tilt train trials.
> The other problem is when to run it.
> Wagga isnt a good location for terminating trains , especially if the
> terminating train is going to sit at the platform for any length of
> time as it ties up one of the 1500 M loops .
> Might be possible to shunt the train onto the Ladysmith branch but its
> a bit of work.
>
> MD
>