You might want to add to your article (if you can) and offer the travel budget concept as a reason for induced demand. You might also want to mention/discuss latent or suppressed demand as a factor of induced demand.

If the weather is clear the view of the Mallee area from the plane would be better than what you’d see passing through Hattah on 80.

The issues with the Stanwell Park viaduct and Clifton Tunnel have not still not gone away, and the long section of single track south of Unanderra hasn’t changed except for a wire above it.

I wonder how much the Kiama electrification has really that area – there’s still plenty of trips requiring a change of train (between electric sets) or with an Endeavour in the electrified section (imagine the last scenario in Victoria)

Interesting idea in relation to 25kV AC electrification. Pity that QR isn’t using their overheads to Rockhampton for much at the moment – was Emerald also wired?

The reason that I said autonomous changes for Kiama south would be the same for the Maitland service – the same reason all rail patronage eventually rises, the cost of living and the growth in population.

I would guess that new carriages has had an effect as well, reinvigorating the service.

As we’ve discussed on Phin’s series, electrification can make a difference if frequency is increased and if transit time is reduced.

In fact, it is a sine qua non (without which not) in otherwords, you wouldn’t want to electrify if you aren’t also going to reduce transit time and increase frequency.

But you don’t have to electrify to do these things.

A little explored scenario is what might have happened in Newcastle and Wollongong if the lines had not been electrified, but the money spent on realignments. As we know, these lines did not reduce transit time, but did increase frequency.

On opening day for both the service quality did improve by virtue of the V sets arriving….but U sets and plenty of 46 hauled car sets also arrived, which were no improvement over what had previously run eg the Budds and Tullochs, the 900 cars, the 620s, the diesel hauled loco sets. Many of these non-electric sets provided service under the wires after the wires went live. It was many years before a full airconditioned service was provided.

I don’t know if the electrification budget would have bought the massive base tunnels the routes require, but might have bought a Hawkmount straightening, or a Fassifern to Adamstown straightening. This might have chopped 15 minutes of the Newcastle transit time.

The money would definitely have bought a fleet of airconditioned diesel rail cars (say the Endeavours a few years earlier) that if run to a suitable frequency would have improved service quality.

The project was of course intended for freight, but was never a goer for this – with a change of locos at Broadmeadow and in many cases at Lithgow for the coal.

We know that Qld was able to electrify at a fraction of the kilometre price at high voltage and in NSW this opportunity was lost because of a misplaced desire to get best value from rollingstock that was already becoming obsolete. Cheaper electrification might have enabled the branches eg Kandos, the Hunter Valley lines, the Metropolitan Colliery and so on to be done, which in turn would have ensured no loco changes and cheaper operation into the future.

There is no reason why a competent scheduler couldn’t have kept the 46 fleet for the Glenlee and Lithgow general freight runs until they expired, and kept the existing Vs and Us on the mountains and Gosford runs.

I think Phin covered “the spark effect” in his Economics of Electrification series.

Riccardo re “the Hunter class cars in NSW” – has replacing ancient 620/720s with those done anything for patronage? The services haven’t become any less infrequent.

Right now I am looking at the topographic map of the area between Wagga and Canberra looking for the gaps. I believe the VFT investigation had a similar issue – a giant tunnel under the range near Burrunjuck though nowhere near as much engineering as the Cooma route would have required.

Going from Albury would require a direct and very long confrontation with the Great Dividing Range, and the valleys in this area all run NW-SW (as in Victoria) which is the worst possible alignment they could have for a direct rail line.

The further north you go (Tumbarumba, Tumut or Gundagai) the fewer of these ranges you have, until you hit Yass when you are basically hitting the undulations of the Cullerin Range which are far more mild, but still have a significant impact on rail operations today.

If you look at the road map below

http://maps.google.com.au/maps?f=d&saddr=-35.285985,149.133911&daddr=Wagga+Wagga+NSW&hl=en&geocode=%3BFRtE6P0dE7LICA&mra=dme&mrcr=0&mrsp=0&sz=8&sll=-35.759886,148.639526&sspn=2.264367,3.537598&ie=UTF8&t=p&z=8

And see that the road takes over 3 hours and travels 242 kms indirectly from Wagga to Canberra, yet this alignment, shortened by a tunnel south of Burrunjuck and made suitable for 200km/h running, is probably the best you can do.

It is, as you can see, no surprise the VFT people found the alignment difficult, and a lot of what was gained by running the flat inland route to Wagga from Melbourne, was lost in the next 180km as the crow flies to Canberra.