It would probably have allowed what wheat and general goods there was at Balranald, Robinvale, Morkalla to be diverted to Adelaide, as per the S.92 of the Constitution. Whether the existing branches to those places would then have closed, or generated more traffic by virtue of a superior route, is conjecture.

The Constitution was quite clear – the use of railways for defence purposes was 100% in WWII and could have been kept after that for Cold War/Anti Soviet arguments as well. By the time the states had made a case to the High Court that the defence threat was over, I suspect they would have long since lost interest.

To me the nationalisation issue was more than just about standardisation, it was also about creating viable contiguous corridors, such as is now being discussed with the Inland Rail route.

Lines like the Peak Hill line might appear harmless and peripheral in themselves, but as part of a national freight route could be quite significant. Even Hay and Pinnaroo branches could have been part of a direct Sydney-Adelaide route. I gather the Broken Hill route is pretty close to a direct Sydney to Perth route, but it isn’t the direct route to Adelaide.

Blamey was very unpopular and was reputedly a crooked cop so Monash would have been preferrable, although an old man (thoughts of Petain here, keeping generals past their prime).

As for the Melbourne bus network, I agree that they all need a common livery. As a visitor, I found it really confusing trying to determine what was a Metlink bus and what was a charter bus!

I like the way things are done in Perth – all buses are either white and green or silver and green, and Transperth branding is dominant – the only mention of the operator is a message ‘This service is proudly operated by xxx’. Similar liveries also apply to the B-Series trains (~2004) and the ferries, while the A-Series trains still have some patches of red remaining from when they were introduced. In fact, TP hardly ever mention the actual operators of the service, marketing the whole thing as one integrated network.

Again, with the ticketing, I like the way it’s done in Perth – with regular tickets just being referred to as 1 Zone – 9 Zone or 2 Sections, and the value tickets being xxxRider (SmartRider, DayRider, FamilyRider and formally MultiRider). And bus travel in the CBD is free. Adelaide make it a bit misleading as the ‘Zone’ ticket implies that there are zones when there aren’t, and the eastern states systems have all managed to get some kind of a ticketing system brand that is maligned by many users – Go Card, myki or (shudder) T-Card.

That said, TP isn’t quite perfect – the bus network is horribly infrequent in many areas, especially on Sunday, and there isn’t a ‘true’ all day ticket on weekdays (DayRider is only after morning peak a la Sydney Off-peak return). But at least they get there marketing (largely) right.

I don’t know whether Monash would have followed Webb down the train order route – I think he would have gotten onto dieselisation or at least 1500v DC electrification along the more steep routes in Victoria and damn what people thought of the technology being Continental, before trying out removing the signal bridges – which were only in four or five locations anyway; if anything loading gauges might have been more entrenched if as I suspect he would have gone down the route of electrification.
SG in 1962 put a lot more in than were ever bypassed on the North-East. I would have been very

The more I think about it, the more I think he would have leaned on the Americans to pitch in for some help building the gap between Alice Springs and Larrimah, and certainly would have considered putting the borders at least in CR’s hands – or even just appropriating the interstate connections for the ‘war effort’.

I think he would have probably pushed for nationalisation of the railways under the banner of the CR, probably when Curtin and Chifley were in office federally, as it would have been the only time he would have gotten a fair hearing for that – he certainly would have been rejected by Billy Hughes.

In fact – there’s another what if right there. On a tangent, I also read Chifley’s biography, he was very much for federalising things, disliked the States and their existence. What isn’t recorded is what he thought of (or whether he did think of) having one federal rail system controlling freight and having one standard (or broad or narrow) system across the board. How close did we go to having maroon and silver CR everywhere, especially when Wallangarra and Albury collapsed?

Patsy Adam-Smith in my opinion has always lionised Clapp more than he deserved, and made him out to be more than he was; while he was painted as being a nice man who gave the nation oranges and Art Deco executive trains, he also seemed to ignore the Ashworth Report, did little to change the design of steam locomotives (the X was a glorified C, the K was probably his best locomotive) and really let things go so badly that when WW2 came along, the VR in my opinion really suffered badly in rebuilding, so much so that we’re still affected.

Also, ABC1 at 17:00 tomorrow (6th Feb 2010) has a doco on Monash. Sadly, the anachronism doesn’t pick up ABC.

Ideally some sort of arrangement for piggybacking narrow gauge stock on top of standard gauge and a little remedial track building might have got goods quicker from NQ via the inland routes and across to Boggabilla and south.

I could have imagined even via Tocumwal into Victoria, largely free of tunnels. Overline bridges could also have been dynamited, and new crossings built Donovan Rd Healesville-style.

I can even imagine, using the Wallangarra and Goondawindi routes, and potentially the Roto and Stockinbingal routes, a one-way traffic arrangement, with the Roto/Goodawindi complex being used as northbound and the Wallangarra/Tocumwal line as south bound.

Would have required some quick thinking trackwork but would have saved what was apparently hundreds of men at each of the breaks of gauge.

I almost regard the legacy branchline network as if it had never existed – at best it distorts debate on good transport options.

If you read the NSW Govt grain lines report you see a fundamental disconnect between what is there, and what is needed. The sentimental lines around Cowra just aren’t needed because the grain for that market is small volume, domestic grain, where the best returns are from exports.

A relative is the water manager of a large rural council, he was telling me that it really is no longer the rivers that matter, but the aquifers. Some ostensibly dry land areas, which none-the-less have good underground water, are going to be carrying Australian agriculture when the riverine and rain fed systems fail. This is changing the whole layout of Australian agriculture.

And the wheat economics in NSW are actually pathetically small distances, it is often pointed out in US and Canada and grain haul could be 1000km plus – much too far for a single truck driver.

On farm storage is taking away from the traditional use of the grain handlers’ silos for storage purpose. And I gather even when siding silos are used, the actual silos are become irrelevant, with grain stored on the ground much as coal has been.

I would suggest the future of this industry needs to be much more towards multimodal general freight – with places like Griffith or Mildura for preference accepting containerised loads on flats, much as the capital cities do, on mainline standard rail lines (where the wagon and crew utilisations rival mainline standards) – no more 15km/h crawls that take three shifts to move a single grain train to/from the likes of Gwabegar or whatever.

I have few regrets about branchlines. I think Tumut could have been made to work with resusication of the line to Coolac, and a Hume Hwy alignment to Adelong, and maybe retention of the last little bit into Tumut, for the paper. Oberon ditto (although the preservation mob are making strides here).

I also think the Mt Gambier debacle is regretable as it relates to Government failure than lack of traffic – I suspect the paper trains would still be running if the Heywood line had been standardised with the mainline.

But few other regrets – hard to think of too many lines that were prematurely closed.

1. Greenhouse theory and implications has been scientific orthodoxy for 20 years now. It’s widely regarded humanity is dancing toward disaster on this one. But in that time no-one has done anything to make a meaningful difference. Essentially I think this is a failure of the approach taken so far. Basically a few people have changed a few light bulbs and used that as a basis to take the high moral ground and blame everyone else for not selling their cars and skateboarding to work. And this is occurring on an international scale. The international diplomatic process is that everyone agrees something needs to be done (more than *anyone* is prepared to do), and from then on the whole diplomatic apparatus is used by each individual country to try and reduce their contribution as much as possible.

Personally, I think the only way greenhouse is going to be properly addressed is if it’s done on an industry by industry basis. If the airline industry succeeds in developing it’s algae based bio-fuel, then that might be the catalyst for this sort of approach. For coal fired power to be a long term solution – and by that I mean over the next 50 to 100 years, not the next 10 – they are going to need to get sequestration working. That hasn’t gotten beyond proof of concept stage, but the engineering and economics are sound.

So I see that no-matter what happens with the politic or consequences of greenhouse pollution, we are going to be hauling coal to our ports for a long time yet. 10 years as an absolute minimum. And even if the industry does bite the dust in our lifetimes, the current investment is still going to pay for itself many times over before then.

2 Nukes? Forget it. Regardless of the pollution issues they simply aren’t economically viable. Like the VFT they *might* be viable with heavy government subsidies, and government are the only people who are prepared to “insure” the required buildings (ie, if they do stuff up, no-one can ever expect to be properly compensated). This is the reason next to no new nuclear reactors have been built in the first world in the last 20 years (Scandinavia excepted IIRC). The don’t make financial sense. Go out to Coober Pedey some time and check out how much wind they have out there, and how much space they have to put up windmills. This will and should happen long before we get nukes.

3 Branchlines? Rail trails. In NSW most of the disused branch lines are 60lb rail which is sitting around on terrible alignments literally pushing up daisies. The youngest 48 in more than 40yo now, and at 900hp they were never a particularly viable rail freight engine anyway. These lines are an anachronism, and in fact many were ever when they were opened. If a viable rail cargo emerges on any of these routes, it will be cheaper for everyone to just rebuild a shorter, modern link to the nearest main line.

Many rail trails in Victoria have shown to stimulate more tourism economic activity than many of their former rail lines ever did. As Australia becomes increasingly urbanised there will be an increasing demand for “normal” people to engage with the rural environment in some way other than looking at it from their car window on the freeway.

Most disused branch lines have $40-$50/m worth of perfectly good 100yo steel sitting there doing nothing. A rail trail costs $10-$20/m to build, and $2-$3/m a year to maintain. It’s a unique sort of public investment in that the benefits a real and tangible, but the cost is negative.