Trans-Australian Railway - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Trans-Australian Railway crosses the Nullarbor Plain

Nullarbor Plain

The Nullarbor Plain is part of the area of flat, almost treeless, arid or semi-arid country of southern Australia, located on the Great Australian Bight coast with the Great Victoria Desert to its north. It is the world's largest single piece of limestone, and occupies an area of about...

of Australia from Port Augusta

Port Augusta, South Australia

-Electricity generation:Electricity is generated at the Playford B and Northern power stations from brown coal mined at Leigh Creek, 250 km to the north...

in South Australia

South Australia

South Australia is a state of Australia in the southern central part of the country. It covers some of the most arid parts of the continent; with a total land area of , it is the fourth largest of Australia's six states and two territories.South Australia shares borders with all of the mainland...

to Kalgoorlie in Western Australia

Western Australia

Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...

. It includes the world's longest stretch of dead-straight railway track, a 478 kilometre (297 mi) length between the 797 km post west of Ooldea and the 1275 km post west of Loongana.

The line forms an important freight route between Western Australia and the eastern states. Currently two passenger services also use the line, the Indian Pacific for its entire length and The Ghan between Port Augusta and Tarcoola

Tarcoola railway station, South Australia

Tarcoola is a station on the Trans-Australian Railway. It serves the former mining town of Tarcoola in South Australia. Since the Central Australia Railway was rebuilt as standard gauge in 1980, it has been the site of the junction of the line to Alice Springs and later to Darwin as the...

.

Earlier passenger services on the route were known as the Trans-Australian or, commonly, just 'The Trans'.

History

In 1901, the six Australian colonies federated to form the Commonwealth of Australia. At that time, Perth

Perth, Western Australia

Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia and the fourth most populous city in Australia. The Perth metropolitan area has an estimated population of almost 1,700,000....

the capital of Western Australia, was isolated from the remaining Australian States by thousands of kilometres of desert terrain and the only practicable method of transport was by sea, a time-consuming, inconvenient and often uncomfortable voyage across the Great Australian Bight

Great Australian Bight

The Great Australian Bight is a large bight, or open bay, off the central and western portions of the southern coastline of mainland Australia.-Extent:...

, a stretch of water known for rough seas. One of the inducements held out to Western Australians to join the new federation was the promise of a federally funded railway line linking Western Australia with the rest of the continent.

In 1907 legislation was passed, allowing for the route to be surveyed. The survey was completed in 1909 and proposed a route from Port Augusta

Port Augusta, South Australia

-Electricity generation:Electricity is generated at the Playford B and Northern power stations from brown coal mined at Leigh Creek, 250 km to the north...

(the existing railhead at the head of Spencer Gulf

Spencer Gulf

The Spencer Gulf is the westernmost of two large inlets on the southern coast of Australia, in the state of South Australia, facing the Great Australian Bight. The Gulf is 322 km long and 129 km wide at its mouth. The western shore of the Gulf is the Eyre Peninsula, while the eastern side is the...

in South Australia's wheatfields) via Tarcoola

Tarcoola, South Australia

Tarcoola is a town in the Far North of South Australia 416 km north-northwest of Port Augusta.Tarcoola is taken from a non-local aboriginal language from an area around Tarcoola Station in NSW; it means river bend.-History:Tarcoola Post Office opened on 18 August 1900 and the town was...

to the gold mining centre of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia, a distance of 1063 miles (1711 km). The standard gauge

Standard gauge

The standard gauge is a widely-used track gauge . Approximately 60% of the world's existing railway lines are built to this gauge...

(56.5 inches (1.4 m)) line was costed at £4,045,000. Legislation authorising the construction was passed in December 1911 by the Andrew Fisher

Andrew Fisher

Andrew Fisher was an Australian politician who served as the fifth Prime Minister on three separate occasions. Fisher's 1910-13 Labor ministry completed a vast legislative programme which made him, along with Protectionist Alfred Deakin, the founder of the statutory structure of the new nation...

Labor

Australian Labor Party

The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...

government and Commonwealth Railways

Commonwealth Railways

The Commonwealth Railways were established in 1912, as part of a government department, currently called the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, by the Government of Australia to construct the missing link in the east-west transcontinental railway and...

was established in 1912 to build the line. Work commenced in September 1912 in Port Augusta. The line was built to standard gauge, even though at the time the state railway systems at both ends were narrow gauge. The entire intercity route was not converted to standard gauge until 1970.

Work proceeded eastwards from Kalgoorlie and westwards from Port Augusta through the years of the First World War. Construction progressed steadily as the line was extended through dry and desolate regions until the two halves of the line met on 17 October 1917. From the start of construction until 1996 the Tea and Sugar Train carried vital supplies to the isolated work sites and towns along the route.

Terrain

The final distance was 1051.73 miles (1692.60 km), slightly less than the original survey. At no point along the route does the line cross a permanent fresh watercourse. Bores and reservoirs were established at intervals, but the water was often brackish and unsuitable for steam locomotive use, let alone human consumption, so water supplies had to be carried on the train. In the days of steam locomotion, about half the total load was water for the engine.

Names of stopping places

See also List of localities, and stopping places related to the Trans Australian railway line

Most of the stopping locations in the 129° E to 134° E part of the railway in South Australia (exception is Deakin is 3 km inside WA state border which is 129°) were named after the first seven Australian Prime Ministers

Prime Minister of Australia

The Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia is the highest minister of the Crown, leader of the Cabinet and Head of Her Majesty's Australian Government, holding office on commission from the Governor-General of Australia. The office of Prime Minister is, in practice, the most powerful...

Name of Prime Minister	Prime minister number	Distance from Port Augusta Port Augusta, South Australia -Electricity generation:Electricity is generated at the Playford B and Northern power stations from brown coal mined at Leigh Creek, 250 km to the north... in miles
Deakin Alfred Deakin Alfred Deakin , Australian politician, was a leader of the movement for Australian federation and later the second Prime Minister of Australia. In the last quarter of the 19th century, Deakin was a major contributor to the establishment of liberal reforms in the colony of Victoria, including the...	Second and later	599
Hughes Billy Hughes William Morris "Billy" Hughes, CH, KC, MHR , Australian politician, was the seventh Prime Minister of Australia from 1915 to 1923....	Seventh	567
Cook Joseph Cook Sir Joseph Cook, GCMG was an Australian politician and the sixth Prime Minister of Australia. Born as Joseph Cooke and working in the coal mines of Silverdale, Staffordshire during his early life, he emigrated to Lithgow, New South Wales during the late 1880s, and became General-Secretary of the...	Sixth	Cook, South Australia Cook, South Australia Cook is a railway station and crossing loop on the standard gauge Trans-Australian Railway from Adelaide to Perth, with no inhabited places around.-History:... 513
Fisher Andrew Fisher Andrew Fisher was an Australian politician who served as the fifth Prime Minister on three separate occasions. Fisher's 1910-13 Labor ministry completed a vast legislative programme which made him, along with Protectionist Alfred Deakin, the founder of the statutory structure of the new nation...	Fifth	479
Reid George Reid George Reid may refer to:George Reid , American Revolutionary War generalSir George Reid *Sir George Reid , Prime Minister of Australia...	Fourth	460
Watson Chris Watson John Christian Watson , commonly known as Chris Watson, Australian politician, was the third Prime Minister of Australia...	Third	445
Barton Edmund Barton Sir Edmund Barton, GCMG, KC , Australian politician and judge, was the first Prime Minister of Australia and a founding justice of the High Court of Australia....	First	376

Other federal ministers from the 1900-1917 era do occur outside of this sequence, amongst stopping places on the rail route.
Curtin and Chifley are much closer to Kalgoorlie while O'Malley and Lyons are on the South Australian side.

Operations

Because of the inevitable problems of finding suitable water for steam locomotive

Steam locomotive

A steam locomotive is a railway locomotive that produces its power through a steam engine. These locomotives are fueled by burning some combustible material, usually coal, wood or oil, to produce steam in a boiler, which drives the steam engine...

s in a desert, the original engineer, Henry Deane

Henry Deane (engineer)

Henry Deane was an Australian engineer, responsible for electrifying the Sydney tramway system and for building the Wolgan Valley Railway and Trans-Australian Railway.- Biography :...

envisaged diesel locomotive

Diesel locomotive

A diesel locomotive is a type of railroad locomotive in which the prime mover is a diesel engine, a reciprocating engine operating on the Diesel cycle as invented by Dr. Rudolf Diesel...

s for the line. He got as far as making enquiries with potential manufacturers. Unfortunately, a scandal involving the supply of sleepers led to Deane's resignation before the diesel locomotive proposal had advanced beyond the point of no return.

It was not until 1951 that regular diesel hauled passenger services worked on the Trans Australia Railway, hauled by the new GM class locomotives.

The Trans-Australian Railway originally had crossing loops (passing sidings) 400 m long every 100 km or so. As traffic increased the number of crossing loops increased. To handle longer trains, crossing loops were lengthened so that in 2008 they are all at least 1800 m long and spaced about 30km to 60km apart. Most crossing loops are unattended and train crew operate the points as required. Crossing loops now have self restoring points, so that points are reset to the straight route when a train departs from a crossing loop. The loops are now being fitted with radio controls so that train crew can set the points as they approach. The safeworking

Safeworking

Signalling block systems enable the safe and efficient operation of railways, so as to avoid collisions between trains. Block systems are used to control trains between stations and yards, and not normally within them. Any block system is defined by its associated physical equipment and by the...

is Train Orders.

External links

Australian Bureau of Statistics article on federal railways.

History

Terrain

Names of stopping places

Operations

External links

Further reading