DIVERSITY OF GAUGES

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 115, 10 February 1944, Page 3

DIVERSITY OF GAUGES

Australian Railways

From Sydney comes tbe news that plans for‘the post-war standardization of Australian railway gauges are to be prepared by the chairman of the Land Transport Board, Sir Harold Clapp. The anomaly of the diversity of gauges of the railways owned by the different Australian States has been for a long time regarded as a very real hindrance to the progress and development of the Commonwealth. This great drawback to rapid traffic has evolved gradually, side by side with the growth of each State The multiplicity of Australian gauges is remarkable. New South IS ales is the onlv State to have the standard gauge of 4ft. SJin. Tn Queensland, Tasmania and Western Australia trains, run on a gauge of 3ft. 6in„ and Victoria favours the “broad” gauge of sft. 3m. In South Australia the “broad,” “standard and “narrow” lines are all represented, and throughout tbe whole country there are numerous smaller railways of gauges varying from 3ft. 6m. to -ft. The I ederai railway, of 1050 miles, which crosses the Nullarbor .Plain from .Port. Augusta to Kalgoorlie, was constructed ou the “standard” gauge, yet. the new line intended to link Darwin with Adelaide, which now extends to Alice opriugs from the south, has been built with the “narrow” 3ft. 6in. gauge. Though as a general rule the gauge peculiar to one State ceases at the border of the next, there are several instances of- the lines of one State penetrating far into another. The Victorian “broad” railway runs as far as Adelaide in South Australia, and a special line of “standard” gauge was constructed from the New South Wales border to. Brisbane in order to overcome the interstate problem. , • . u Passengers travelling from one State to another are often inconvenienced by the change of trains, sometimes late at night. The classic example is the transhipping at. Albury on the VictorianNew South Wales border. Goods sent from State to State.have to be unloaded from the rolling stock of one system and reloaded on .to the wagons of the next. Frequently in cases of freight dispatched from the east coast to the west, several such transhipments are necessary. Of the total length of 27,900 miles of Australian railway, 14,400 miles are “narrow” gauge. 7300 are “standard and 6200 are “broad.”- The task of.standardizing 20,600 of line will be enormous. 1