Re: More Money for Alice to Darwin line

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

Im interested in peoples views in relation to the 7000 people allegedly needed 
to build this project.
It seemed on face value a bit high to me and so I researched a bit the 
workforce needed for previous major rail projects.
The last significant rail project which comes close to AP to Darwin is 
Tarcoola to AP, which was built with very little fan fair and with a workforce 
of only 1000 people, of whom most only worked on parts of the project.
Only a very small number of people actually worked on the whole project.
Admittedly Tarcoola to AP isnt as far as AP to darwin , but its well over half 
as far so at best we might expect 2000 people to be needed.
These days , building new rail lines is a highly mechanised business, with 
most of the work done with modern track laying machines which need only a 
handful of people to operate them.
Indeed , when the new SG line was being built from Newport to Geelong ,the
track laying machine with a total crew of less than 30 people was laying track 
at around 2km a day.

Are there any major engineering problems in building AP to Darwin?


cheers
MD