Re: More Money for Alice to Darwin line

["< Tell >" <telljb@OZozemail.com.au>]

The spin doctors are hard at work Maurie. ;)

What they should be saying is that 7000 people who are
*already* employed, will contribute in various ways to
the project.  
You are correct, the actual construction force will be
very small. 

----Terry Burton
  

>mauried@commslab.gov.au (Maurie Daly) wrote:

> 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