Conflict between freight and passenger rail traffic in Sydney
C class meets S-set at Berowra on the congested Main North line.
Sydney has a small metropolitan freight railway network with a main line from Port Botany to Sefton,
and a branch from Dulwich Hill to Rozelle that has become irrelevant in recent years, except for a train
servicing a flour mill which will cease by the end of 2008. Part of this line was converted to light
rail in the 1990s and the owners of MLR are keen to extend it further to Summer Hill although the state
government has been reluctant, using the excuse that spoil trains from North West Metro construction will need it.
Interstate mainlines are seemingly tacked onto the ends of double track suburban lines, with the 1.5km superfreighter from Melb to Bris competing with the spark from Macarthur to get a path. Freight trains do not run between 6am-9am and 3pm-6pm on weekdays to free paths for CityRail peak services.
There are no winners in the current scenario. Suburban services to stations on the line between Hornsby and Strathfield only come in 30 minutely intervals during the off-peak, while long intermodal trains get stuck in the refuge for hours at Cowan for hours if they miss the curfew.
The ARTC is building the Southern Sydney Freight Line from Sefton to Macarthur which should cure the issues along the suburban section of the Main South. Passenger services to the Southern Highlands area are inadequate as noted in this Railpage thread and would suitably be replaced with a high-speed train. As the suburbs south west of Sydney are mostly flat and there is space for extra tracks easily visible south of Glenfield, this is the easiest project to complete.
Quadding from Strathfield to Hornsby has been proposed, but any additional trackage in this section would most likely be serviced by the 2tph of Wyong/Newcastle CityRail trains as well as any freight. Beyond the suburban terminus, V sets to the Central Coast operate at a near-suburban frequency, so any quadding further south will move the bottleneck further north. Much rail demand from this area comes from long distance commuters from dormitory areas to Sydney, an example of poor urban planning.
Superfreighter to Brisbane slowly makes it’s way through Brooklyn
Unlike anywhere seen in Victoria, after Berowra the line makes it’s way to the small station & former suburban terminus at Cowan where it descends a 1 in 40 grade to Brooklyn, crosses the river on a large bridge and follows a scenic route beside Mullet Creek to Woy Woy, through the isolated passenger station at Wondabyne. There is no way that extra tracks could be constructed along the existing alignment.
The Western Line to Penrith sees less issues as there are four tracks to St Marys which provide enough paths beyond Granville at least for all trains. Australian National decided in the 1990s to send interstate traffic via Cootamundra to avoid the steep grades and poor alignment of the line west of Penrith, leaving hourly CityRail services west of Emu Plains and coal trains as the main users of the line.
Four tracks at Doonside on the Main West, yet typically CityRail only provides two trains per hour (plus one interurban) in the off-peak!
The South Coast Line has a quad-track section to Hurstville with double track as far south as Unanderra. Suburban services on this line operate almost independantly of the rest of the CityRail network, with most trains running through to Bondi Jungo. The most congested section of this line is between Hurstville and Sutherland which receives 6tph of off-peak suburbans, 1tph of interurbans to Wollongong and usually at least one coal train per hour. The alignment of the line between Waterfall and Thirroul is deserving of a separate post.
The main issue for comparison in Victoria is all stations suburbans getting in the way of V/Line express trains (and v.v) on double track lines. Not sure how much of an issue it is in Brisbane – there is three tracks to Petrie and Darra now as well as the Exhibition Loop to help absorb freight traffic. Poxboxes to Gawler are unlikely to be delayed by the infrequent stone train in Adelaide, and Perth has no freight competing with EMUs.
Solutions
I think it is clear that if you were starting from scratch, you’d go the way Perth has with the suburban network isolated from other networks. I don’t see a problem with allowing infrequent freight traffic from local industry like the Lyndhurst cement or Long Island steel trains in Victoria to use suburban tracks at quieter times, but an intensive frequency of suburban services cannot be efficiently provided with competing traffic.
Moving containers between Australia’s two largest cities should operate completely independantly of local commuter trains, and vice versa. Upgrading the suburban sections is crucial if you’re upgrading the rest of the line – it would still be useless if a train had a quick run from Albury to Macarthur and then either gets stuck in a siding, or crawls behind other traffic.
The Sydney Basin is surrounded by hills in all directions making railway construction difficult compared to other states. If the lines from Sydney to Newcastle or Wollongong were to be constructed now they would sbe major engineering accomplishments, although most likely both routes would involve a large tunnel.
What is the real solution to this mess?
Thanks Somebody
You’re right, Sydney’s freight network is much smaller than other cities.
Adelaide has effectively separated freight apart from the occasional Penrice train and maybe a wheat north to Roseworthy? The problem has been the Goodwood crossover, and what happens when they derail.
Melbourne lacks a freight corridor to its east but has effectively separated most of it on the west.
Brisbane mixs narrow gauge trains a fair bit although I never seem to see them ‘in the way’ the way they often are in other cities.
I suppose if you looked at it prewar – you had a network that got you from Darling Harbour and Botany to Sefton, and multiple trackage effectively suburban and country lines, and only had to share with passengers beyond, in what were very much outer suburbs like Villawood or Mortdale.
What has happened since, of course, is that the network didn’t keep pace with the suburbs.
One of the conflicts I see is that even if you could afford the base tunnels through the range, you would still end up with a new line that both passengers and freight would want to use. And four tracks worth of tunnel is an extravagant thing.
We are not talking about Tawa in Wellington where the passenger and freight density are both ‘medium’ rather than ‘heavy’ we may well be talking about lines that would be heavily used from their opening date. I suspect if the Gosford service dramatically improved, the ridership would go up accordinly and you’d still have a crowded line.
Thanks for that Riccardo.
Adelaide’s separation between freight and pass is probably less intentional as BG was previously the main gauge in SA but has declined to only the suburban & Barossa lines. Look how far a train could have gone past Gawler in the past.
I’m curious how a freight corridor would get it’s way to the south-east of Melbourne. You’d need to DG a pair through Caulfield etc and there would be heavy interface with passenger trains even if it was done as part of upgrading the line to Dandy.
I read a statistic on one of the VIC gov websites that 25% of containers arriving at Melbourne’s ports is bound for the Dandenong area, and as you know none of it goes by rail – plenty of potential traffic.
Hope that stuff to do with rail freight is not too off-topic for this blog.
Yes an interesting perspective – Adelaide has no broadgauge freight to speak of, hence has separation of both gauges and traffic types!
A few issues with this post, so let me start at the beginning:
Which cities are being compared to Sydney’s “small metropolitan freight railway network”? It’s the largest dedicated freight network in any Australian city even when the de factostandard gauge freight networks in Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth and Melbourne (all of which also accommodate passenger trains) are taken into account. The Sefton Park Junction – Port Botany freight lines are unique in Australia in being double tracked all the way to Cooks River (Port Botany will eventually follow), something most other port rail links cannot claim.
One aspect of the rail freight problem in Sydney that many commentators (wise and otherwise) don’t realise are the constraints on the existing (let alone future) rail freight network caused by inadequate terminal facilities, particularly in Sydney, but also in Melbourne. Cooks River and Chullora are examples of freight terminals ill-adapted to an intermodal era by virtue of layout (dead end sidings) and siting. Meanwhile other intermodal container terminals served by rail (Camellia, Leightonfield, Yennora, Minto) are in the right places in west and south-west Sydney where industry moved to after WWII (away from the original traffic generators of the freight lines), but suffer from both poor layouts and inadequate connections to a segregated rail freight line. Fixing the terminals in Sydney (and Melbourne for that matter) along with dedicated freight lines would smooth out the peaks and troughs of freight train arrivals and departures from Sydney (and Melbourne) that cause knock-on effects across the interstate network as far west as Perth.
While I agree that the SSFL is a critical step forward for tackling the issue of the southern approach to Sydney for rail freight, once this is complete, the inadequacy of Sydney’s intermodal terminals will be more starkly exposed than ever before.
There is some hope that the revised Sydney Ports proposal for Port Enfield (first proposed over a decade ago by NR and defeated by local councils and residents) and a proposed greenfield site on ex-Army land at Moorebank will provide some new, well designed, modern intermodal terminals (in the mould of Islington or Kewdale) that are designed for quick stripping and reloading of 1800m long trains without excessive shunting.
Once the SSFL is complete, the northern exits will need to be tackled. Fortunately, some incremental investment from the early 1990s has seen the building of a dedicated freight track from Flemington to North Strathfield and third tracking from North Strathfield to Rhodes, along with bi-directional signalling on the Short North to allow crossing and passing moves. More recent work is seeing the construction of a bypass line around Hornsby station for freight trains to clear the suburban terminus. The 2001 ARTC track audit priced a North-Strathfield-Berowra freight track at $262 million.
Fixing both the northern and southern approaches to Sydney for rail freight would deliver some important benefits not just for transit time, but also reliability and service quality by reducing the impact of the curfew to the edges of the interurban CityRail network. Of course, the terminals would still cause headaches of stripping and rebuilding trains, but if they were also tackled, there would surely be greater benefits accruing to operators and track managers alike.
Of course, if the NSW Government had have proceeded with its 1998 policy document Action for Transport 2010, there might have been a high-speed rail link on a new alignment between Hornsby and Warnervale already built, with Stage 2 from Warnervale to Wyong probably underway by late 2008.
But that’s a story for another day.
LS
Thanks LS. I suppose ’small’ depends on the boundaries.
I cheat somewhat by counting Melbourne’s freight network as starting at Werribee and finishing at Jacana and Dynon via Brooklyn and Bunbury St.
And by counting Adelaide as starting at Belair and finishing at Salisbury with a branch to Birkenhead.
Sydney, by my definition, is only Botany-Enfield-Chullora and Flemington and a few sidings or shunts from this. Darling Harbour has gone and Rozelle all but gone.
Perth of course has its mega freight network (though sad that even earlier alternatives such as the Armadale-Jandakot line to take Bunbury Line trains off the Kenwick section, are long gone). And a stated policy of not extending the suburban trains along freight lines, but of building new lines.
Sydney, as you say, at least has a good set of suburban shunts and depots but could have made more of it if not for the NIMBYs. And the track layouts are poor.
I particularly worried about Yennora, which is in a reasonably good location, but only available via a suburban line which is only going to get busier. I know of no plans to build a third track to Yennora, though it could be sensible to do so as traffic levels rise.
LS, I considered it to be small relative to the size and boundaries of the urban area.
Good point about terminals etc – would be pointless having a train get from Brisbane to Sydney 2 hours faster only for it to be delayed at the terminal. I didn’t touch on this issue in this post as it was focused on the issues relating to passenger and freight trains sharing the same lines.
Thanks Ric and Somebody for providing your rationale.
I would argue however that Sydney’s small dedicated freight network sees a lot of volume travelling on it. Next time you’re in Sydney, go to the Canterbury Hotel (cheap beer and a passable Chinese restaurant) and spend a couple of hours on the verandah watching the parade of freighters on the goods lines: The scrap iron flotillas of old GMs and ALCos working the container shuttles in and out of the Port and the PN coal, wheat, steel and container trains heading to and from the Illawarra.
An awful lot of freight traffic for a relatively limited corridor, but a very useful piece of infrastructure to have, especially when (back in the old pre-2004 timetable days) there were 10 minute frequencies on the Bankstown line in the peaks and 15 minute frequency on the shoulders.
As regards terminals, Sydney has got quite good at container shuttles between inland terminal and port, although the mode share of containers on rail is still only around 20%. However, Sydney does has more dispersed container terminals in worse conditions and locations than Melbourne, but Melbourne’s container on rail problem is exacerbated by having ‘one big yard’ for containerised freight (which is seeing some big improvements) and tacitly killing off through focusing rail infrastructure improvements around Dynon the opportunities for other outer metro terminals (Somerton, Dandenong, Laverton) to concentrate containers to rail for shuttling to port.
LS
can any one tell me what route the north to south bound coal trains take through the sydney metro system…regrads
Sorry Gregb, you mean west to south? Not a lot of coal climbing Cowan Bank though it has happened. I suppose the traditional way, via Enfield and the goods lines to Marrickville and then south. With considerable disruption it is possible in principle to swing a train of the main west onto the Auburn-Berala chord and then into Chullora. They can also head through Fairfield on a bad day and go via Moss Vale, and presumably Fairfield will see more action with a Maldon Dombarton line in play.