Campaigns to save rail infrastructure

["ben scaro" <bscaro@hotmail.com>]

It's worth considering that some campaigns to save or re-establish rail 
infrastructure may have the consequence of leaving the taxpayer with 
expensive white elephants down the track, and giving rail a bad name.

A key example is the campaign to rebuild the Abt rack railway at 
Queenstown on the West Coast of Tasmania.  This politically motivated 
plan attracted a commitment of $20 million in Federation funding. 

One must wonder if any private sector operator will be found to take on 
this line. 

The proposal calls for an arched roof railway station like a Brunel 
design and an adjacent international standard hotel ! (The original 
Queenstown station was a far more modest weatherboard structure.)

Queenstown is literally in the middle of nowhere, and it seems very 
unlikely that it could ever attract the volume of passengers to make the 
line and attached hotel etc pay.  Other tourist railways are either 
adjacent to big tourist centres (eg Cairns-Kuranda) or huge cities (eg, 
Puffing Billy). Fair enough, the Abt line goes to Strahan, a small 
tourist town, but that is hardly the equivalent of the Great Barrier 
Reef.

Where on earth do they plan to buy rack steam locos ?  Designing and 
building a few of these would probably eat up half the funding.

And if it doesn't work financially, you can guess who'll be footing the 
bill to keep it going . . . 

Ben Scaro



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