A RAILWAY PROBLEM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 20111, 23 November 1928, Page 15

A RAILWAY PROBLEM.

THE AUSTRALIAN GAUGES. COMPLAINTS BY TRAVELLERS. [from our own correspondent.] SYDNEY. Nov. 15. Travellers on the transcontinental railway are complaining of Australia's absurd breaks of gaugo, the folly of which would be accentuated if it had to fight a war within its own borders. Four separate trains, for example, are involved in travelling from Perth to Adelaide, fivo from Perth to Melbourne, seven from Perth to Sydney, and about nino from Perth to Brisbane. With conversion in South Australia and Victoria to the standard gauge, a person could travel in one train from Kalgoorlie, in Western Australia, to the Queensland border. Although the Commonwealth and tho other States have expressed their readiness to bear a portion of tho cost of converting the Victorian and South Australian gaugo to the standard gauge, it appears unlikely that anything will be dono in tho immediato future.

A standard gauge railway from Port Augusta, the South Australian end of tho transcontinental railway, to Broken Hill, in New South Wales, has been suggested as an alternative. With such a line, it is pointed out, tho transcontinental train could run from Kalgoorlio to Sydney, and later right through to Brisbane, with tho completion of tho Kyogle-Brisbane line.