AUSTRALIA’S RAILWAYS.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XL, Issue 11387, 2 October 1915, Page 6

AUSTRALIA’S RAILWAYS.

Probably no country in the world has such a big railway building programme ahead of her as Australia. Her vast distances cry out for lines to link town to town, district to district, country centres to available ports. The first of these lines to be opened for traffic will be that from Kalgoorlie, in West Australia, to Port Augusta, near Adelaide. The 'end of the year 191(5 is mentioned as the time for this historic linking of the east with the west. The multiplicity of railway guages, however, is a problem which Australians have become almost too perplexed over to be able to think clearly about it. In Queensland the same guage as in New Zealand, 3ft (sin, is used. In New South Wales, the world’ standard guage, 4ft B>£in, is found ; in Victoria it is sft 3in, and from the Victorian border at Adelaide, in South Australia,- the same guage is used. The remainder of South Australia’s lines are on the Bft Gin gauge, while the new trans-conti-hental to Kalgoorlie is being built on the 4j:t B>£in gauge. So, at the Adelaide railway station, no less than three different guages will converge. The confusion and transhipment will be prodigious. In time, the whole of the Australian railways are to be altered to the 4ft Bj£in guage, the cost being estimated at about £35,000,000. The Northern Territory Railway, from Port Darwin in the north, is on the 3ft Gin guage, and so are all the West Australian railways except the new one to Adelaide. The whole trouble is traceable to inter-State jealousy in the days before federation, when each State wished to have the products of its lands shipped at its ports and not from the ports of neighbouring States, however close at hand they might be. Even to-day this spirit prevails, but men have become more reasonable. New South Wales has agreed to allow Victoria to push a branch of her sft Sin guage across the Murray to tap a remote settlement and so give it access to a handy port; and Queensland has agreed to build a 4ft B>£in line from Brisbane to meet at Tweed River the North Coast Railway of New South Wales. To the stranger the tangle of guages appears inextricable, yet, no doubt, it will be unravelled in time.