In 1897, four years before federation, a Federal Convention meeting held in Adelaide considered the matter of Australia’s gauge issues. They tried as forcefully as possible to impress upon the proposed Federation commissioners that a uniform gauge – Standard gauge – was an essential ingredient if the successful federation of Australia was to be achieved. Again it seems that their advice was perceived as being of no value.

  By 1910, Australia began to realise something needed to be done. A conference of railway commissioners in that year decided that 1435 mm Standard gauge should be the standard for all of the country, and all other gauges converted accordingly. By all appearances the commissioners were again completely ignored, as nothing was done to implement its recommendations.

  In the second decade of the 20th century, with the country now federated, this diversity in gauges in the new Commonwealth’s railway gauges again did not go unnoticed back in mother-country Great Britain. Lord Kitchener, Chief of the Imperial Staff, visited Australia in 1911, and severely criticised the country’s ‘bewildering array’ of railway gauges.

  His criticisms, echoing what Major-General Edwards had said 22 years earlier, included an observation that the diversity in gauges actually favoured an enemy invasion – directly opposite to the received wisdom of the day, where gauge differences were held to be an impediment to enemy invasions (see Parts 1 and 7 for the parts played by railway gauges in times of war).

  In World War II, some 30 years after Lord Kitchener’s criticisms, the incompatibility in rail gauges throughout Australia proved to be a major constraint in moving troops from various points in the country to the main ports from where they could board ship, and this constraint nearly crippled Australia’s contribution to the Allied war effort. There were a total of 12 gauge changes throughout the whole of Australia, many of which confronted most troop divisions, as well as civilian support. It’s fortunate that the war had not reached Australia’s shores and that those same troops were not needed at short notice within various parts of Australia itself to defend the country.

  Kitchener’s 1911 criticisms did not go entirely unheeded in Australia, at least in terms of connecting the east with the west. The still fledgling federal government voted that same year to build the Trans-Australian Railway to Standard gauge (see below). But that did not mean that the rest of Australia would change its existing railways to Standard gauge, or indeed stop building new ones to different gauges.

  In 1921 a Royal Commission was set up to again review this whole gauge issue, after the 1910 Commission got nowhere, and it once again recommended Standard gauge – not even dual gauge – as the only solution to Australia’s gauge problems. The Commission’s report stated:

  “That adoption of a uniform gauge is, in the opinion of this Conference, essential to the development and safety of the Commonwealth; that the Commission’s recommendation of 4ft. 8½in. gauge be accepted; that steps be taken by the Premiers of all the States to consult their governments…[and] …that the gauge of 4ft. 8½in. be adopted as the standard for Australia; that no mechanical, third rail, or other device would meet the situation, and that uniformity could be secured by one means only, viz., by conversion of the gauges other than 4ft. 8½in.”

  Part of the outcome of that report was that henceforth all of Australia’s new locomotives should be capable of being converted from one gauge to another. Considering that this was about all that the report actually achieved, it was not much of an outcome really.

  While there was some Standard gauge building in the 1930s (such as the line from Port Pirie to Port Augusta), little further progress was made in rationalising the continuing gauge diversity. In essence, the Royal Commission’s findings were carefully ignored by the States.

  Australia tried again in 1945. The former Chief Commissioner for Victoria Railways, Sir Harold Winthrop Clapp, produced a report for the Commonwealth Land Transport Board. Three main recommendations were made in the report:

  Exclusive use of Standard gauge (i.e. no dual gauging) from Perth on the west coast all the way east to the NSW border;

  New strategic Standard gauge lines from NSW north through Queensland, including both new branch lines as well as conversion of existing branch lines;

  New Standard gauge line to Darwin, including closure of the existing 1067 mm gauge route.

  The report also made it clear that confining the use of Standard gauge to only main lines was not a solution, and neither was dual-gauging. Essentially it was all or nothing. In the event, only recommendation number three was implemented, as the other two recommendations appeared to offer no direct advantage to Western Australia and Queensland, and they refused to comply.

  Once again, the States objected to being dictated to by the federal government (especially when it involved NSW, which was the only State that was already using Standard gauge and therefore saw an advantage in the report’s recommendations), and narrow local interests again trumped the national common good.

  Things got no better until the 1960s. Another attempt at making sense of Australia’s railway gauges was made, starting in the 1950s. In 1956, William Wentworth chaired a Rail Standardisation Committee, formed by the federal government. With predictable results, the few and somewhat modest recommendations it made (primarily the conversion of a few main lines to Standard gauge or dual gauge) were at best only partly implemented. Again, Australia’s gauge problems had not really been resolved.

  With almost equal route distances in the 1960s of 1067 mm, 1435 mm and 1600 mm gauges, each proponent of its favourite gauge was not going to yield its position, at least not easily. Until the opening of the transcontinental Standard gauge line in 1970, between Sydney and Perth, it meant that any traveller attempting a long distance journey was going to face at least one, and likely many more than one, change of train where two different gauges met up, as we noted above.

  The map above shows both past and current breaks of gauge. Some, such as Gladstone, are no longer serving as a break of gauge, in that only one gauge now exists at those locations, while Marree has lost its railways altogether, now that a new Standard gauge line many kilometres to the west by-passes the town. Nonetheless, the map still gives some ideas as to the scale of Australia’s problems in resolving its gauge issues.

  [It is perhaps ironic that the town of Gladstone, home for so long to three gauges, is named after the same Mr Gladstone who was so highly critical of Australia’s ‘obstinacy’ in using multiple gauges.]

  Only in the 1970s was there any serious attempt made in getting rid of at least some narrow gauge lines, and building the Standard gauge line from east to west coasts, as well as to Darwin, while triple gauge freight yards were built in Gladstone and Port Pirie (see map above) – 1067 mm to Broken Hill, 1435 mm to Kalgoorlie, and 1600 mm to Adelaide. But other proposed Standard gauge lines (such as into Adelaide) had to wait until the 1980s and later.

  The most recent attempt at standardising Australia’s railway gauges was made in the 1990s. The federal government set up something called the One Nation Project – at last, it seemed, a visible railway-based commitment to a united federal country! Under this program, the line between Melbourne and Adelaide was converted to Standard gauge, as were some other 1600 mm gauge lines. The line into the Port of Brisbane was made dual gauge (1435/1067 mm). Other recent projects include dual gauging various lines in Victoria. All these will be covered below.

  But while much work has been done, and it is now possible today to travel on one Standard gauge train between east and west coasts, as well as to the very north of the country to Darwin, without incurring any breaks of gauge, there is still a huge amount of railway gauge diversity still in existence. Will Australia, albeit rather belatedly, now ‘bite the bullet’ and resolve these remaining gauge issues that still encompass the entire country from one end to the other?

  Current initiatives look encouraging, as noted above, and as we shall see shortly. Let us take a look at where Australia is today, as well as a bit more of its railway building history.

  Western Australia:

  Notwithstanding that the first railway in Australia was built in New South Wales (NSW), I am going to continue our odyssey geographically, from west to east, and heading north or south as necessary. Accordingly our journey begins in the State of Western Australia.

  Other than the Northern Territories, Western Australia, the country’s largest State geographically, was actually the last State to get a railway, in 1871. It was a private timber railway – gauge not known. It would be some years later before the State got its first public railway.

  The State is mostly empty. Apart from Perth and its environs (population around 1.7 million, and the city itself having the distinction of being the farthest away from any similar sized centre of population compared to anywhere else in the world), most towns are small, catering primarily to cattle, sheep and mining operations. Only two or three other towns in the State have a population greater than 50 000 – this is indeed frontier country, and the few railway lines within Western Australia, once outside of Perth, reflect its sparse population and overall desolation.

  There may not be many railway lines in Western Australia, but that does not stop it from having, like everywhere else in Australia, more than one gauge.

  Western Australia’s first public railway arrived in 1879. It was a 1067 mm gauge line between Northampton and Geraldton, north of Perth. The argument for choosing this gauge was that it was more economical to build than Standard gauge. This is of course to a degree true, as we have seen elsewhere, but only if traffic is light and the terrain difficult. In the case of Western Australia, although the terrain did have some more difficult sections in places, it was nothing like railways in, say, Switzerland.

  As more lines were built, traffic developed significantly and became quite heavy, at least on some lines, in particular the east-west line from Kalgoorlie, this being the main line into the State, and its only link with the rest of Australia. Cost savings therefore were likely marginal, and what savings there might have been have surely been far outweighed by the additional costs of coping with breaks of gauge with other parts of Australia’s railways, both in the past as well as now.

  The original 1067 mm gauge railway from Kalgoorlie was known as the Eastern Railway, and took a circuitous southerly route, ending at Fremantle, just south of Perth. It involved the building of a number of tunnels, as well as a replacement route when the original route proved too steep for the heavily loaded trains that were using it.

  The line was eventually closed, in 1968, as a result of the building of the more direct northerly Standard gauge/part dual gauge route, ending in Perth, and going via the Avon Valley and Swan View (25 km east of Perth). The new line, finally opened in 1970, included converting (not dual-gauging) the 1067 mm gauge trackwork between Northam and Kalgoorlie to Standard gauge (see map above).

  Western Australia however was not devoid of Standard gauge railways in the State’s early years after the formation of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901. The newly formed federal government initiated the building of the trans-continental line between Port Augusta (in South Australia – see below) and Kalgoorlie, a distance of 1700 km. This line was the major inducement to get Western Australia to join the Commonwealth of Australia – almost exactly paralleling the Canadian federal government’s efforts to entice BC into staying in Confederation in 1871.

  Notwithstanding that Western Australia’s railways west of Kalgoorlie were to 1067 mm gauge, as were those in South Australia east of Port Augusta, the decision was made to build this new link between east and west Australia to 1435 mm Standard gauge, as a direct result of Lord Kitchener’s scathing comments during his visit in 1911 (see above).

  The line, opened in late 1911, and originally known as the Trans-Australian Railway, crosses the famous Nullarbor Plain, and holds the record of having the longest stretch of straight railway line in the world – 478 km without the merest hint of a bend. If nothing else, it is testament to the surveying skills of the original builders working under the direction of engineer Henry Deane.

  At Kalgoorlie, the western terminus of the Trans-Australian line, there was of course a break of gauge as the line met up with the original 1067 mm gauge line from Perth. It would not be until 1970, as noted above, that Standard gauge trains would reach Perth.

  Within the State’s capital, Perth, we find that there are two railway stations there, East Perth and Perth Central.

  The much more convenient Perth Central, situated in the city centre and some 2 km away from East Perth station, has only 1067 mm gauge tracks, and therefore is used only by local services and some regional trains (such as The Australind luxury train to Bunbury, 175 km south of Perth). Opened much earlier than East Perth station, in 1894, Perth Central is host to an extensive and very modern network of commuter trains, parts of which form a sort of underground within the city itself.

  East Perth Terminal Station, opened in 1969, has two gauges within its platforms – 1067 mm and 1435 mm. Outside the station there are dual 1067/1435 mm gauge tracks, which today reach as far as Northam, some 100 km east of Perth.

  The Standard gauge tracks are used by the Indian Pacific – Australia’s east-west transcontinental train, which starts its journey in Sydney – as well as The Prospector, which starts its journey in Kalgoorlie. The 1067 mm gauge tracks are used by local services (the Midland Line, which also connects with Perth Central).

  There are other Standard gauge lines in Western Australia, quite a few in fact, but most of them supporting mining operations. In the Pilbara region in the north of the State, a number of companies, such as BHP and Rio Tinto, operate Standard gauge mining railways, totalling as many as 6 or 7 separate lines.

  As these lines do not link up with any other part of Western Australia’s railways, the fact that they are to Standard gauge is no disadvantage in terms of interoperability. The trains running on these lines are the heaviest in the world, especially in terms of axle loadings, and have required a lot of research into wheel/rail interfacing.

  Additional mining lines are planned, some much further south. Oakajee Port, a proposed new deep water port 25 km north of Geraldton (itself 425 km north of Perth), is serviced by a dual 1067/1435 mm gauge line. It was completed in 2014.

  As well as mining railways, there were also a number of forestry railways, such as the Pemberton Tramway and the Etmilyn Forest Tramway. These were built to the same 1067 mm gauge as the main-line railways, in order that their rolling stock could venture over the main-line tracks as necessary.

  They were however built to much lighter standards than the main-line railways, and thus main-line trains could not traverse these forest railways, even though the gauge was the same. Most of these forest railways are now closed, although some still operate as tourist lines.

  Finally, while Perth does not have a true dedicated underground system as such, parts of the 1067 mm gauge Mandurah line, as noted above, do run underground through the city centre. The proposed Forrestfield-Airport Link will also be to 1067 mm gauge.

  Will Western Australia at some point in the future convert its 1067 mm gauge lines to Standard gauge? Perhaps – it depends on how much inter-operability is required between the two gauges, currently and in the years to come (for example, Transwa, Western Australia’s railway operator, has both Cape gauge and Standard gauge trains, with no way of mixing the two fleets except where there are dual gauge tracks). Certainly, as we saw in South Africa and Japan, Cape gauge is quite capable of handling even dense suburban networks. And the airport link noted above will also stick to the narrow gauge, so it looks as if 1067 mm gauge is not going to disappear.

  Yet, Standard gauge was selected for the Johannesburg-Pretoria Gautrain, amid various proposals to consider converting the whole of Southern Africa to 1435 mm gauge (see Part 3). Could Perth follow this lead, and gradually dual-gauge all of its suburban lines? If it does, Western Australia could effectively become entirely Standard gauge, and play a significant part in the rationalising of Australia’s railway gauges. There are, though, a lot of ‘old timers’ who still feel that Cape gauge is the only ‘real’ Australian gauge, and who would certainly lament its passing.

  South Australia and Northern Territories:

  As the railways connecting these two States are essentially all part of one system, I propose to deal with them together. The railways in South Australia are centred in and around Adelaide, and include various other lines radiating out from the city. In addition, the State is an important link in Australia’s Standard gauge interstate railway network. The State is thus relatively well served by railways.

  Conversely the Northern Territories (NT) could be said to be all but utterly starved of the iron road. There is essentially only one railway line in the NT, which is an extension of the line from Port Augusta, in South Australia, to Alice Springs, and from there to Darwin in the very north of the State.

  South Australia is, or at least was, probably the most schizophrenic, if I may use that word, when it comes to Australia’s railway gauges. But then perhaps that is not so surprising. The State shares a border with every single one of the other five mainland States – Western Australia, Northern Territories, Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria, each of which of course had its own ideas on railway gauges.

  The State plays host to all three of Australia’s main-line gauges – 1067 mm, 1435 mm and 1600 mm (although the 1067 mm gauge has all but disappeared, if not completely so). The existence of each gauge is the result of many conflicting interests and competing strategies in the State’s early years, as well as having to accommodate all the gauge changes and breaks of gauge that are found in all the other adjacent States.

 

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