Trip Report - The Ghan - New York Times

I get the impression that the author may not have been on a long distance train before.

Tony Bailey

overall a good balanced report . however , the likening it to the completion of the UP line across America , i think is way out . It is ignoring the completion of the East - west line across Australia ( Sydney - Perth) , a far more relevant comaparison to the east - west connection in America , in terms of nation building and neccessity .
The Adeliade - Darwin Railway is a good idea whose time will come , but its not a vital link ,they did without it for perhaps a century .
anyway , as we would say on both Australia and NZ , Thanks for the link , Mate .

David Benton wrote:overall a good balanced report . however , the likening it to the completion of the UP line across America , i think is way out . It is ignoring the completion of the East - west line across Australia ( Sydney - Perth) , a far more relevant comaparison to the east - west connection in America , in terms of nation building and neccessity .
The Adelaide-Darwin Railway is a good idea whose time will come , but its not a vital link ,they did without it for perhaps a century .
anyway , as we would say on both Australia and NZ , Thanks for the link , Mate .

It's mainly about shipping time. If ships can deliver containers to Darwin for dispatch southwards and save the cost of sailing round, the rail line will pay its way. Perhaps it needs a branch to Brisbane.

David Benton wrote: It is ignoring the completion of the East - west line across Australia ( Sydney - Perth) , a far more relevant comaparison to the east - west connection in America , in terms of nation building and neccessity .

In fact the Trans was one of the main reasons for getting WA into the federation.

Tony Bailey

george matthews wrote: It's mainly about shipping time. If ships can deliver containers to Darwin for dispatch southwards and save the cost of sailing round, the rail line will pay its way. Perhaps it needs a branch to Brisbane.

In fact there are a number of mining projects coming on in the Territory which would not have been possible without the railway

Tony Bailey

tonymercury wrote:
In fact the Trans was one of the main reasons for getting WA into the federation.

Tony Bailey

Western Australia made it a condition for joining.

I have taken the Prospector and the Indian Pacific.

I think the parrallels with the Americas are quite striking . a large part of the push to build railroads to Western america , and northwards , was to get western states to join the union . and Canda and the USa were in a race to get to western Canada , those could have easily become States of the USA , if the american railroads got there first . And Califionia could have become part of Mexico , etc etc .
At Least Western Australia didnt have a whole lot of choice of neighbours....

And WA had a US citizen as Premier (Forrest) - he said he was Canadian but it later became obvious that he wasn't

Well, FreightLink hasn't done too well with that Adelaide--Darwin railway:

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/31832183/RE ... USINESS-TO

Maybe in 20 years or so...

I may be the only person in the eastern U.S. (maybe in the whole U.S.) with a set of commemorative highball glasses for this railway (and I've never been to Australia). Six or seven years ago I received a call from a transport economist at Monash University in Australia who was doing "due diligence" for the construction of the railway, and was looking for some data on the economics of double-stack container haulage. A friend who knew of my work on double stack economics in North America referred him to me. We had a long conversation and several email exchanges, and I thought no more of the matter until, several months later, a package from Australia arrived on my doorstep. It contained the aforementioned glassware.

Now, I just need to ride the train...