Re: Gundagai - Last Use Of Line?

[Eddie Oliver <eddie.oliver@efs.mq.edu.au>]

David Proctor wrote:

> 
> You cannot be serious! I, as much as anybody, like to see trains running
> instead of buses. However, you have to be realistic. There is no way that
> these branch lines could sustain a passenger service in this day and age. In
> the 1980's, 90's and beyond, there really is only a place for main-line
> services, and branch lines (as well as places that are not on the rail
> network) are definitely best serviced with coaches.

That historically reflects not the necessity of the matter, but merely
the realities of bad management.

If railmotors cost so much more to maintain and run than buses, you have
to ask why. Answer - they were maintained by vastly overstaffed
workshops and depots working to ridiculously restrictive work practices,
they were two (or more) person crewed, they were often allowed to
degenerate instead of having proper maintenance strategies, and so on.

If you tried to run a bus system on the same basis that they tried to
run railmotors, that would have been hopelessly uneconomic too.

Moreover much of the traffic conveyed by the railmotors was parcels,
small goods consignments etc. That was allegedly uneconomic too. Yet the
same traffic is conveyed economically successfully on other modes.

Again, what is the difference? Answer - bad management, especially
related to mismanagement of human resources. 

Of course it may indeed have been uneconomic to maintain the lines
themselves, on the basis that the total (freight plus passenger) traffic
offering was insufficient to cover the costs of track maintenance. But
that is a separate issue from that of abandoning the passenger services
while the lines continued to exist for freight.

Eddie Oliver