Re: National guage standardisation - why 4'8.5"?

["Al" <alpout@optusnet.com.au>]

"Peter Homann" <"peter.homann"@@prr.org.au> wrote in message
9bggc6$779@nntpb.cb.lucent.com">news:9bggc6$779@nntpb.cb.lucent.com...
> michael pascoe wrote:
>
> > Maybe rolling stock was easier to convert to STD Guage as well ?
> > Going from broad to narrow may not have been possible, and visa-versa.
>
> Two things:
> BG to NG was quite possible, viz 830/48 class, which operated on all three
> mainline gauges in SA. As for the line in question, I'm fairly sure that
> rollingstock was made *new* for the TAR, so gauge conversion wouldn't have
> been an issue.
> The choice of SG (corrected now to 1435mm - thanks Ted!) was made by the
> Feds. Wouldn't have anything to do with NSW having an overly strong
> influence, would it?


>From what I remember in an Australian Geographic from a few years ago, good
ol' Lord Kitchener of Khartoum was the person who "suggested" building the
line "all to a standard gauge" (IIRC).  Maybe someone just took his words a
bit too literally.

Now, why would NSW try to influence the federalies over building it in STD
gauge, when it wouldn't have been possible to easily get any of their stock
there (didn't it take 50+ years??)?  After all, what about that story a few
months ago about Vic needing to build a line into NSW to transport materials
into a processing plant, but instead now just ships the raw product straight
out through Melbourne, the idea being the lack of interstate cooperation.

Al