Re: ABC News and the Overland >> the end is nigh.!

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

One of the issues which I have never understood is why GSR paid so much $25 M 
for essentially nothing more than a collection of very old carriages and 1 
station.
Not getting any locos as part of the deal simply makes the whole purchase very 
poor value.
In the case of the Overland , the cost structures , ie payments to run the 
train in the form of track access charges and hook & pull charges,plus their 
own costs,ie their own crews makes the whole proposition a complete fizzer.
To really get any improvement you would need to get the journey down to 8 
hours or less,so that only 1 shift, both GSR crew and  NR crew would be needed.
No chance of that happening though.
Which brings up the next question about track access charges.
What exactly do you get for your money?
ie are you entitled to any particular standard of track for a given track 
access charge.
Its no secret that prior to ANs demise , they had the lowest track access 
charges in the country,(also had the best track) wheras the SRA had the 
highest.
Are we likely to see with the new crowd a common track access charge across 
the whole country,and will it be in any way competitive with the "equivalent 
road access charge" which the trucking industry pays of 0.05-0.08 c per 
ntk,which is approx 10 times cheaper than what SRA are alleged to charge 
,since they wont actually tell you what their charges are.

cheers
MD