Re: Mistakes of 100 years ago

[mauried@commslab.gov.au (Maurie Daly)]

In article <6p742d$57l$2@news.mel.aone.net.au> dbromage@fang.omni.com.au (David Bromage) writes:
>From: dbromage@fang.omni.com.au (David Bromage)
>Subject: Re: Mistakes of 100 years ago
>Date: 23 Jul 1998 10:42:21 GMT

>Maurie Daly (mauried@commslab.gov.au) wrote:
>> Even though we had uniform guage between melbourne and adelaide from 1920 , 

>VR and SAR met up at Serviceton long before the 1920s.

Yes, sorry for the typo , was thinking about the building of the TAR, around 
1882 was when the lines met, even though a uniform guage prevailed , thats 
about all that did, we didnt even get a uniform loading guage, SA was wider 
than VIC.


>> Exactly the same madness happened at Albury from 1962 when the SG line was 
>> built till just prior to the creation of NRC when Countrylink successfully ran
>> the first XPT thru Albury without it having to change drivers.

>At least through running of locomotives had commenced before that.
Thru running of a limited set of locomotives commenced before but it was 
pretty restrictive, 81s,422s and some 80s , although there may have been some 
421s for a while.

>> It also doesnt explain at all why SA also went ahead with narrow guage for 
>> large parts of its network,as did Qld and WA.

>That was more a cost issue than anything else. Narrow gauge pioneer lines
>are much cheaper to build.

Which begs the interesting question that prompted this thread in the first 
place, why didnt the 3 states VIC,SA and NSW all not choose the cheapest 
option  , ie narrow guage, at least Australia 
would have ended up with a National narrow guage network.

cheers
MD