Re: Melbourne maglev

[trambuff@hotmail.com (Daniel Gerrard)]

On Sat, 23 Oct 1999 14:21:20 +1000, Chris Brownbill
<cbrnbill@enternet.com.au> wrote:

>David Bromage wrote:
>> 
>> Oh dear, Phil Sellars is at it again.
>> 
>> Having been laughed out of Canberra and floundering in Sydney, Transrapid
>> is jumping on the new Victorian government to build a maglev line to the
>> airport and Geelong.
>> 
>> The airport line would cost $1.6 billion.
>> 
>> So, write to editors, write to MPs, write to anybody. Just don't let it
>> happen.
>> 
>
>Yes, today's Melbourne Herald-Comic has it as the lead story.  Line from Hoppers
>Crossing - City - Airport believe it or not.  Also are wafty suggestions of
>services to country areas - Geelong and "Beyond Shepparton" whatever that means.
>
>Notwithstanding the indications of the death of Speedrail pointed out elsewhere
>in this group, I hope we're not seeing a tragic repeat of History here.  This
>has many parallels with the legendary story of how NSW and Vic ended up with
>different rail gauges all those years ago.  Competing promoters of different
>technologies (gauges), changes of government and scant regard for eventual
>linkage of two proposed lines.  Or maybe its a bit worse - having been told by
>the Sydney/Canberra mob to bugger off, maybe Transrapid is now running off to
>Vic to get what they wanted in the first place - a toehold on the monopoly
>provision of technology for the new Sydney- Canberra- Melbourne service.
>
>Thankfully, in some of the few textual components of the Herald-Comic it seems
>the new Vic transport Minister, Peter Batchelor, is taking a sceptical approach.


But if we had the same gauge rail, no-one would ever have written the
book "six and a half inches from destiny" or at least written it in
the same context.