"Mr Fitzgibbon actually recommends that the line shall be constructed for the broader gauge; but for the present to lay down only a narrow permanent way for a 3ft. 6in. gauge. No engineer has ever before this time proposed a 3ft. 6in. gauge for a trunk line. No locomotives have ever been constructed for such a line. It is in opposition to the practice and theory of every known engineer and upon every railway since the railway system began. . . The 3ft. 6in. gauge is a dangerous innovation in locomotive gauges. One thing Mr Herbert [Queensland premier] may rely upon. He will still have to take the 4ft. 8½in. gauge whether he likes it or not if the traffic is worth making a railway for at all. As to his alternative, it is not worth a moment's consideration."

  The Moreton Bay Courier was equally scathing in its criticism of the use of the narrow gauge, saying it was a “sad day for the public credit of the Colony”. Members of the House in opposition said that a locomotive of this gauge was a ‘toy’ – “a miserable thing that was never made by any other country”. Such was the intensity of the resistance to the use of 1067 mm gauge.

  The legislature Select Committee chose to review the matter further, at which point Fitzgibbon admitted he had not actually built a line to this gauge before. But Fitzgibbon was obviously a very persuasive engineer. With the help of his many advocates, and again justifying his narrow gauge on cost grounds, he did indeed eventually get permission to build his railway to Cape gauge – and proved it would work by conveying his opponents over his newly opened line, in 1866. They, albeit reluctantly, had to agree that the narrow gauge could in fact do the job.

  But it was a hollow victory really. In later years, Queensland found that it could not connect its railways with Standard gauge NSW, the only Colony that had a rail line that reached the Queensland border (NT and South Australia did not have – and still don’t have – any rail lines crossing into Queensland). It was a potential problem noticed long before any connection became a physical possibility.

  Mr Coote had already pointed out that Queensland’s and NSW’s railways would meet some day, and that a uniform gauge – Standard gauge – was a prerequisite for any connection to be made. Mr Gladstone – the same Mr Gladstone, Colonial Secretary of State, we encountered earlier – also weighed in with his warnings of the problems inherent in a lack of a uniform 1435 mm gauge throughout the land.

  Nonetheless, cost considerations outweighed all others, and it is quite likely that Queensland’s railways might never have been built – or at least built at this early juncture in the Colony’s development – if the narrow gauge hadn’t been adopted. Short term gain in exchange for long term pain?

  Perhaps, although we can never know what would have happened if different decisions had been made at the time. Certainly, the supposed cost advantages were hard to quantify – costs exceeded the initial estimates, and extra funds had to be appropriated. To be fair, however, Queensland’s railway costs were still around half of those in broad gauge Victoria, and a quarter of those in Standard gauge NSW. How much the gauge difference was a factor – and not, say, difficulty of terrain, degree of urbanisation, comparative wage rates and working practices – will probably never be known.

  Over the next ten years, Brisbane was connected, in 1876, while the line was gradually extended ever northwards. By the closing years of the 19th century, trains had reached Townsville and eventually Cairns. Three inland Cape gauge lines were built, to Mount Isa, Barcaldine and Dirranbandi, as well as a number of branches to support freight and mining operations, some of which have since closed, but all to 1067 mm gauge. One of the most scenic of these branches is the Kuranda Railway – first opened in 1891, and today a diesel hauled tourist line.

  These three inland lines were built between the 1880s and 1930. Heavy-haul Cape gauge lines have since been built, and were still being built as late as the 1990s, and even beyond. The most recent, announced in 2011, is for a 69-km long ‘missing link’ – a 1067 mm gauge coal line between the existing Goonyella and Newlands coal networks, approximately 1000 km north of Brisbane, and linked to deep water ports for shipping of the coal. The coal trains on these narrow gauge lines are, like their counterparts in southern Africa (see Part 3), among the heaviest anywhere – the speed may be less than what might be possible on Standard gauge, but capacity does not suffer by any means.

  On the face of it, it would seem that Queensland will never see a Standard gauge line within its borders – except that is already does, with maybe more to come. In 1932, the federal government, as part of its plan to complete a Standard gauge line between east and west coasts (see above), extended the line from Sydney, NSW, into Queensland, stopping at Brisbane, and thus allowing a passenger at long last to travel from Brisbane on Standard gauge tracks into the rest of Australia.

  The line bypasses the previous break of gauge at Wallangarra, 260 km south-west of Brisbane, on the NSW border, where Queensland’s 1067 mm gauge rails met NSW’s Standard gauge rails. In the 1990s, a further extension of the Standard gauge line (part of which was dual-gauged) was made to the Port of Brisbane.

  Will Queensland see more 1435 mm gauge lines within its borders? That depends very much on just how much the Australian federal government continues to push for more gauge conversion. Queensland Rail/Pacific National today already runs Standard gauge freight trains between Brisbane and Melbourne, and wants more Standard gauge lines.

  Like in many parts of the world, separation has occurred between the infrastructure and train operating companies (TOCs). And many of the TOCs (such as Pacific National), in being granted track access, want that track to be Standard gauge.

  Queensland may be forced to at least dual gauge many lines (such as has been done on the line between Acacia Ridge and Bromelton, near Brisbane, which is a break of gauge between Cape and Standard gauges). Having said that, many of the government-owned narrow gauge freight lines are home to private rail operators, such as Australian Railroad Group, and they seem quite happy, at least for the time being, to remain with the narrow gauge.

  In the meantime, Queensland is maximising the performance it gets out of its 1067 gauge network. One of its achievements is the Tilt Train – as its name suggests, it is a tilting train that enables higher speeds to be achieved on curves. Curves on narrow gauges of course tend to be sharper than on Standard gauge – that being one of the premises in the first place to building to narrow gauge. Some curves on even this main line are as sharp as 100 m radius, which can be compared with a typical minimum radius of 500 m on a main-line Standard gauge track, and much larger – as much as 4000 m – on a dedicated high speed line.

  The Tilt Train lays claim – somewhat remarkably – to being the fastest train in Australia, in spite of running on Cape gauge track. Its normal line speed is 160 km/h, between Brisbane and Cairns, while on test runs it has achieved a maximum of 210 km/h (as a comparison, the maximum speed of the Standard gauge Indian Pacific is 115 km/h). It is electrically hauled as far as Rockhampton, diesel thereafter.

  But the limitations of a gauge of 1067 mm were laid bare when a Tilt Train derailed a few years ago. While the cause was attributed to taking a 60 km/h curve at over 100 km/h, it does show that the safety margin for higher speeds on narrow gauges is a lot tighter than on Standard gauge, as the curve wasn’t unduly sharp – just that the narrower gauge cannot provide the same level of stability as Standard gauge, especially when the loading gauge is not that much less, resulting in a higher centre of gravity.

  While the Tilt Train does show what can be achieved on such a narrow gauge, one can only surmise as to what would be possible if the line between Brisbane and Cairns was rebuilt to Standard gauge, including a completely new alignment eliminating the sharp curves. Instead of 160 km/h, the speed could be doubled to 320 km/h, as is seen in many places today, roughly halving the time taken for the 1700 km distance. It would be a viable alternative to air travel, especially over the shorter distances between intermediate towns (such as between, say, Brisbane and Rockhampton, or Cairns and Townsville).

  Narrow gauge:

  When it comes to Australia, I am using the term ‘narrow gauge’ to mean something less than 1067 mm gauge. Queensland is home to one of the most remarkable 610 mm gauge railway networks to be seen.

  If you drive the main highway between Cairns and Brisbane (as I have done), you can’t help but notice the huge network of sugar cane railways dotting nearly every field either side of the road, stretching from Isis Mill, 300 km north of Brisbane, to Mossman Mill, some 1900 km north of the State capital. When these lines cross the road, they have a proper level (grade) crossing, complete with flashing lights.

  These railways even penetrate town centres, such as Rockhampton. There are around twenty separate networks owned by six separate companies, although they co-operate extensively, even sharing locomotives and rolling stock. Most of the trackwork is permanent, although a considerable portion is of a temporary nature, being laid and lifted in accordance with the demands of the crop each year.

  It is claimed that more tonnage is carried on these sugar cane railways than on Australia’s 1600 mm broad gauge lines. Overall, there are about 4000 km of trackwork, three-quarters of which is permanent track, the rest temporary. In the beginning, other gauges were to be found, such as 1067 mm gauge (Pioneer Mill), while a couple were even built to 1435 mm gauge. Today all are to 610 mm gauge.

  Trams and metros:

  Brisbane once sported a tram (street railway) system. Unlike the main-line railways, but like most trams systems in Australia, this was built to 1435 mm Standard gauge. It closed in 1969.

  Today, Brisbane has no metro or tram system as such. However, Queensland Rail operates a 1067 mm gauge commuter network which is concentrated in the city centre/business district.

  One branch of this network serves the Airport, with separate stations for the Domestic and International terminals. Many countries, even when their main-line railways are to a different gauge, often build their airport trains to Standard gauge on a dedicated line (such as Thailand). In Brisbane, this is not the case – the AirTrain shares the same 1067 mm gauge tracks with the rest of the network.

  But Standard gauge trams (or perhaps more properly light railways) may just make a return to Queensland. The proposed Gold Coast Rapid Transit system will link Griffith University with Broadbeach, on the border with New South Wales, and essentially an extension of Brisbane’s metropolitan area. This light railway will be built to Standard gauge.

  Will this crack in Queensland’s 1067 mm gauge ‘hegemony’ signal the beginning of further Standard gauge lines within this State? That is probably a question for the future.

  New South Wales:

  New South Wales (NSW) of course can be considered the cradle of railway development in Australia. The Colony saw its first railway as early as 1831, when an inclined cable-operated mine railway was opened in Newcastle. It remained a private railway, and was subsequently closed. It is not known to what gauge this railway was built.

  Public railways first appeared in 1855. The first of these, between Sydney and Parramatta (now Granville), 22 km away, was to have been a 1600 mm gauge privately-owned line – the gauge of course being chosen by Irish engineer Sir Francis Shields. But gold discoveries in neighbouring Victoria depleted the company’s labour resources, the railway could not be completed, and the company became insolvent. The railway was taken over by the Colonial government, who continued with its construction and opened it in September 1855.

  As told in the story of the country’s early railway development (see Main History, above), Mr Gladstone, followed by Earl Grey, advocated the use of Standard gauge in no uncertain terms for the not-yet-federated country’s new railways.

  But it nearly wasn’t so, as we saw earlier. I do not propose to repeat in detail the damage that Irish engineer Sir Francis Shields inflicted on the railways in NSW, Victoria and South Australia, by changing the proposed gauge from Standard to Irish gauge – a decision that Earl Grey consented to, and was only reversed in NSW at the last minute by Shields’ sudden resignation.

  NSW, conceding to the strong advice from London, then stuck to building its railways to 1435 mm Standard gauge – a stance that was in contradiction to what was happening in every other Colony at the time, and later. But history shows that NSW’s stance was the correct one in the end, notwithstanding the breaks of gauge that resulted throughout the country in the intervening period.

  The use of 1435 mm Standard gauge was made mandatory by the NSW Legislative Council in 1848, and materials for this gauge were ordered in anticipation of building the Colony’s first railway, that between Sydney and Parramatta. But there was a lot of pressure still extant to convert to the 1600 mm broad gauge adopted in Victoria after that Colony refused to revert back to Standard gauge. NSW resisted that pressure, and, as related above, the Governor of the time, Charles Fitzroy, with backing from Earl Grey, remained true to the use of Standard gauge.

  It didn’t take long however before the use of a different gauge from all the other Colonies became a point of contention, especially between NSW and Victoria. In 1881, lines from Sydney reached Albury, on the Victoria/NSW border. The town, around 650 km south-west of Sydney, would later become infamous as one the most prominent of Australia’s tiresome breaks of gauge, sitting as it did on the main line between Australia’s two largest cities, and seeing large numbers of passengers making the change of train, often at the most unseemly of hours.

  Just two years later, in 1883, the 1600 mm gauge line from Melbourne, in neighbouring Victoria, reached Wodonga, just across the Murray River from Albury in NSW. With NSW’s Standard gauge line terminating at Albury, it was agreed to build a bridge across the Murray River, thus connecting Wodonga with Albury. Because neither Victoria nor NSW could agree to which gauge the track on the bridge should be laid, dual gauge 1435/1600 mm gauge track was installed – another example of that ‘interstate intransigence’ when it came to railway gauges.

  In the next decades, a large network of Standard gauge lines was constructed radiating out from Sydney. One of these lines was extended into the Australian Capital Territory surrounding the country’s capital of Canberra.

  This Territory is probably the only discrete area in Australia that has never seen more than one gauge for its public railways. Opening the first line available to the public in 1924, it is perhaps fortunate that the gauge used was Standard gauge – it would indeed have been embarrassing if, while the federal government had been pushing, as it did (and still does), for the whole country’s railways to be a uniform Standard gauge, it itself had played host to a different gauge.

  Actually, the city of Canberra did briefly see a non-Standard gauge railway. The Yarralumla brickworks had a private 1067 mm gauge tramway that ran between the brickworks and what is now Old Parliament House, in 1923. When it was extended, it used an existing Standard gauge railway line, converting it to the narrow gauge in the process. The line’s existence was brief – it was removed in 1927, and was the only example of non-Standard gauge rails in the Territory.

  Today, NSW has a large network of railways, somewhat reduced in recent years as uneconomical branch lines have been closed, but all to Standard gauge. The network includes the main lines between Sydney and Melbourne, in Victoria, on which CountryLink, the current operator of passenger trains in NSW (as well as Victoria) runs the XPT high speed train. The XPT runs on Standard gauge tracks between Sydney and Melbourne, as well as on four other routes, including to Brisbane.

  If any British readers think they may have seen this train a bit closer to home, it is essentially a modified HST IC125, as found on some main lines in the UK, but with a US-based trailer coach design incorporating upgraded air conditioning and other modifications to suit the Australian operating conditions. But while the basic train (or at least its power cars) is the same, the XPT is geared to have a maximum operating speed of 160 km/h, which is somewhat less than its British counterpart’s regularly achieved 200 km/h, and no better than Queensland’s Tilt Train running on 1067 mm gauge tracks.

  In addition to the XPT, CountryLink operates other Standard gauge trains, such as the Xplorer diesel services to Canberra, Broken Hill and other destinations.

  Within Sydney itself, a hybrid commuter-underground system operates, extending for over 2000 km and incorporating no fewer than 308 stations, some well out into the suburbs and beyond, in essence becoming more like regional lines. Within the city centre, all lines are underground, where the system becomes a form of inner-city underground railway, albeit using the double-decker suburban trains.

  Needless to say, the entire system, electrified in the late 1920s at 1500 V AC, runs on Standard gauge tracks. A proper underground extension has been proposed, and this too will use the same gauge.

  In regards to trams, Sydney currently does not have any form of street railway system. But it once did – and it was once one of the largest in the world. Comprising over twenty lines, it was built to a uniform Standard gauge, the same gauge as for the main-line railways. The last line closed in 1967.

  Today a new light rail system is in operation, naturally to Standard gauge. It runs between the inner city and Sydney’s western suburbs. It was opened in 1997, and there are plans to extend it.

  While 1435 mm is the default gauge for railways in NSW, the State does have a smattering of other gauges within its borders. A total of six lines from neighbouring Victoria are to that State’s 1600 mm gauge. These lines are now almost completely closed (a couple never even opened). There is also a 1676 mm gauge funicular railway in Katoomba, noted as the steepest railway in the world, at an average angle of 52 degrees.

  At the other end of NSW, there were some 1067 mm gauge lines extending from Queensland. Like with the broad gauge lines, these are now all closed. Also to the narrow gauge were some lines from South Australia, including the old main line between Broken Hill and Port Pirie – these too are now closed.

 

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