Re: Keswick or Adelaide Station?

David Bromage (dbromage@metz.une.edu.au)
24 Nov 1997 04:05:56 GMT

Alex Borodin (alex.borodin@qrail.com.au) wrote:
>I personally think that the Pacific rail link between Brisbane and
>Sydney should only exist to service the coastal towns on the way.
>It's way to snakey to be of any real use as a genuine Inter-City
>rail corridor. For fast travel, we need another corridor somewhere
>flat, unpopulated and that is also suitable to pay its own way as
>a freight line.
>
>Brisbane->Moree->Sydney/Canberra->Melbourne. The Newell highway would
>do nicely, thank you very much! :-)

Moree is a bit out of the way unless you want to take all your freight via
Dubbo to Sydney. And then you still have to get it down the Blue Mountains.
Even if you followed the existing line from Moree to Sydney you still have
to get over the Wellington Range between Werris Creek and Scone.

Sydney - Tamworth - Tenterfield - Warwick - Brisbane has been suggested as
an alternative to the north coast line. The existing line (with deviations
as required) could be used to Tenterfield, then a new line built to
Brisbane. Transit times would probably be about 15-16 hours. The crew
change point would probably be Werris Creek.

As to passenger services, the Xplorer currently does Sydney to Armidale in
7 hours, 45 mins. With deviations this would probably be reduced to about
7 hours. An XPT could easily run Sydney to Brisbane via Armidale under
12 hours.

Cheers
David