Re: Media, railways and facts.

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

>Interesting at least to see that there is real concern about the two
>guage network in Victoria....what a stuff up, IMHO the Adelaide SG
>should have been seperate line Npt-North C, flyover the BG at North C,
>then one BG and one SG to Gheringhap, single SG to Maroona, either dual
>guage or (if you can't mount 60km/m rails as dual guage) gauntlet track
>Maroona-Dimboola, single SG to the border and beyond.  Retain all
>intrastate BG, cause minimal impact with the SG.  But no, not much
>lateral thinking happens in Victoria, so we re-create all that is bad
>about rail in Australia - seperate guages.

>Cheers,
>CH.
>-- 
>Craig Haber
>albatross@harnessnet.com.au
>Manufacturing Systems Engineer (B. Eng, RMIT 1998)
>Web Page Designer, Harness Racing, Railways, and Essendon Football Club
>fanatic
>http://www.harnessnet.com.au/

Unfortunately its not as easy as it sounds.
Gauntlet track is OK provided there are no points required as gauntlet track 
points and crossing loops are an engineering nightmare to build and maintain 
and are extremely expensive.
The same is true to a lesser extent of dual guage ponts and crossing loops .
Building dual guage turnouts even of 80km/h is difficult and expensive to 
maintain.
This would have been one of the major problems with a stg guage track via 
Ballarat.
The system that we have is conceptually not bad, except that the implentation 
is crummy.
The new STG guage line should have been built as a separate line all the way 
to Ararat, ie double track from Nth Geelong C to Gheringhap, one BG and one SG 
easy to do as this line was originally double track anyway.
Gauntlet track from Maroona to Ararat would be OK as there are no crossing 
loops in between ,but separate lines would be better, (its not very far).
Retain the BG line to Portland, and the BG line to Ararat via Ballarat, at 
least this way Ararat could still have a passenger service. via Ballarat.
Build a SG connection to the Wheat silos at Geelong for grain from west of 
Ararat, or more controversally take the grain from west of Ararat to Adelaide.
This means that Ararat to Dunolly would not have needed to be sta 
ndardized,and the money saved could have been used to build the double track 
from Nth Geelong C to Gherinhap.
The wheat lines west of Ararat would still have needed to be standardized.
The advantage of this approach is that the sg line could just about exist in 
its own right , ie after the sale of Vline freight there would have been a 
clean split between the new buyer and ARTC.
As we now have it , there is a real mess where we have shared sg and BG lines.
God knows how this is going to be resolved.

cheers
MD