Passenger Trains > Aussie Transcon Passenger Service

Incredible what the Aussies can do with $1 billion. Would have liked to have been riding this train.



First Passenger Train on North-South Track Arrives at Halfway Point in Australia's Outback

By Mike Corder Associated Press Writer
Published: Feb 1, 2004



ALICE SPRINGS, Australia (AP) - Rolling through vistas of red sand and spiky bushes, the first passenger train to traverse Australia from south to north rumbled past the halfway point of its journey deep in the Outback on Monday.
Christened "The Ghan," for the Afghan camel drivers who helped build the first railroad from Australia's south coast, the train arrived in the central city of Alice Springs on time at noon, 24 hours after leaving Adelaide.

Thousands of people stood cheering and waving by the track Sunday as the train passed through Adelaide's sprawling suburbs and into the dry farmland to the north on Sunday. By Monday morning, the towns had given way to the lonely expanses of the Outback.

After stopping for a celebration in Alice Springs, The Ghan was to head onto newly laid tracks that complete the long-awaited coast-to-coast railroad from Adelaide in the south to the northern port of Darwin. The route stretches for 1,851 miles.

While an east-west link between Sydney on Australia's east coast and Perth on the West Australian coast has existed for years, this is the first time north and south have been connected.

Former prime minister Gough Whitlam, speaking to reporters on the train, said the link finished work he started three decades ago.

"I am delighted that Australia has now fulfilled the transcontinental railway which my government and the then premier of South Australia inaugurated 30 years ago," Whitlam said.

While The Ghan has been ferrying passengers from Adelaide to Alice Springs since 1929, Monday was the first time the train was able to continue on to Darwin, thanks to the 882-mile track extension completed late last year at a cost of $988 million.

The inaugural train was made up of 43 carriages hauled by two locomotives, making it Australia's longest passenger train.

Whitlam was its guest of honor, staying in an ornate wooden carriage used in 1921 by Britain's Prince of Wales when he visited Australia before becoming King Edward VIII and later abdicating.

The new track features 90 bridges and 160,937 tons of steel rails.

Daytime temperatures were sometimes so hot in the Outback that the railway's builders worked under lights through the cool nights and slept through the days.

Once the train starts regular services, tickets for adults will start at $334. For this special first trip, the most expensive ticket was $9,120.

Freight trains began using the new route on Jan. 17.

(given the Aussie exchange rate).

And once per week service for the passenger train is how to run LDTs under the Australian model.

Still when you consider how many miles of track they laid, that to me is rather incredible, but then again maybe I'm ignorant on cost per mile of railroad.