AHC Downunder: Mainland Australian mainline railways standardise on 5'3''

Myrtonos

The first railway in this country was right here in Melbourne, between Melbourne town (now our CBD) and Sandridge (now a suburb called Port Melbourne). It was built to the track gauge mentioned above, also the track gauge used in Ireland.
New South Wales originally agreed to build to this gauge too but changed their mind not long before we started construction.
The idea is to imagine that New South Wales and Victoria both build to the gauge on which they originally agreed.

Let's look at the situation in our timeline (O.T.L). We have standard gauge interstate tracks right across the continent. And in all mainland states except New South Wales, there is some dual gauge track. In Victoria and South Australia, this is between two gauges differing by more than the width of the railhead, but less that the total width of standard rails. This means narrow footed rails on the dual gauge side. Additionally, it is not allowed where the speed limit is greater than 80km/h.

At the beginning of 1995, trains from Melbourne to Adelaide ran on the very same track as the train carrying that video camera, and train from Adelaide back to Melbourne, of course, used the track next to it. Not so long later, the Melbourne-Adelaide line was shut down for conversion to standard gauge.

Regional railways in South Australia have mostly been converted to standard gauge. Some regional railways in Victoria have also been converted, but only if trains on them don't share tracks with the Melbourne suburban ones. Both Melbourne and Adelaide have large, interconnected suburban rail networks with broad gauge track and it seems nearly impossible to close parts of these networks for conversion while others remain open. Many sections of track on these networks are each shared by two, or sometimes more than two routes, and there are some where dual gauge track is simply not feasible.

If we standardised on 5'3'', there would never have been a need for dual gauge track. I would guess the added cost of broad gauge in New South Wales, Queensland, and Western Australia would have paled in insignificance compared to the cost of dual gauge track and the cost and inconvenience of changing the gauge of many regional lines, at least in Victoria and South Australia.
 
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Myrtonos

Both New South Wales and Victoria originally agreed on 5'3'', not 4'8.5''. New South Wales then changed its mind and went for narrower track gauge, this in turn actually being a bit narrower than the wheel track of most wagons of the time, this being similar to modern road vehicles.
 
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Teejay

Gone Fishin'
If New South Wales and Victoria agreed on a common gauge. South Australia, Queensland and Western Australia would likely adopt the 5'3" gauge as well, which could mean either South Australia, Western Australia or both build the Trans Australia Railway instead of Commonwealth government as in OTL.
 

Myrtonos

South Australia did adopt 5'3'' in our timeline. But most of their regional railways have since been converted to standard gauge, each being temporarily closed during conversion. Converting the Adelaide suburban to standard gauge was considered as well but rejected, likely because it would be too costly with too much disruption.
To understand the matter, consider two routes that share a section of track. Temporarily closing one line for re-gauging while service on the other is uninterrupted is only possible if there can be dual gauge track on the shared section. Even if they don't share any track, a common depot serving both routes may make it difficult or impossible to store and maintain trains or take them into and out of service if the conversion is done line-by-line.
 
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Riain

Banned
Myrtonos said:
trains from Melbourne to Adelaide ran on the very same track as the train carrying that video camera, and train from Adelaide back to Melbourne, of course, used the track next to it. Not so long later, the Melbourne-Adelaide line was shut down for conversion to standard gauge.
Click to expand...

Before 1995 the Melbourne - Adelaide BG train ran via Ballarat/Ararat which was single track beyond Sunshine a mere 12km from Spencer St station. In 1995 it was changed to the routing via Geelong by building a stand alone SG track alongside the double BG tracks from Newport to the Nth Geelong yards. From Nth Geelong to Geringhap a BG track was converted to Dual Gauge track and beyond that via Horsham to Adelaide the line was converted to SG.

A couple of branch line off this were also converted to SG.

The reason the route changed was because the Geelong route was flatter and therefore both cheaper to develop and more efficient in use.
 

Myrtonos

My memory is that the sleeper train to Adelaide went through Yarraville before the gauge change. I have heard of the Overland Express going through Ballarat. The way things are, (standard gauge) interstate trains cannot run through Yarraville but have to take another route.
Similarly, trains to Syndey, also on standard gauge track, must go west before going north, the cannot use the Craigieburn line before Jacana junction (near a sububan station called Jacana) nor the suburban line to Upfield. Consider the two states that originally agreed on 5'3''. Before dual gauge track here in Victoria, passengers used to have to cross the border between them by foot rather than on a through-track, in other words, they had to change trains at the border.

Standardisation on a common gauge, such as 5'3'' would have meant through-running from Melbourne to Sydney, and it may have been it harder for road transport to beat rail. Money and resources spent on regauging and on dual gauge would most certainly be spent on other things, such as on more grade separations.

Trams here in Melbourne and the remaining line in Adelaide are standard gauge, as were the previous systems in Sydney and Brisbane, and indeed the Sydney light rail. But might these have all been 5'3'' if the railways were all that gauge? If you look around the world, there is a tendency for legacy tram systems to be the same gauge as the local railways. Examples are Sydney (mentioned above), and cape gauge tramways in Perth. Railways in Tasmania are cape gauge, as were the tramway networks of Hobart and Launceston.

Or the previous Dublin tramways used a gauge only slightly narrower than 5'3'', the gauge of the local railways. And in what is now the Commonwealth of Independent states (formerly the U.S.S.R), most tramways are the Soviet railway gauge.
 

sloreck

The larger the area running on one gauge the more efficient the rail transport is - the reason why 4' 8.5" came in to being in the USA during the ACW, this accelerated regauging in the North. Narrow gauge for specialized areas, and maybe trams is reasonable. Because Australia has no rail connection to anywhere else, it really doesn't matter what gauge is used as long as it is "standard". Another advantage to one gauge is that it allows more efficient use of rolling stock, locomotives and cars can be transferred/sold without the expense of reworking them etc.

Of course I always thought that the wheels on Australian RR stock were on top of the cars since everything is upside-down there... :)
 

Myrtonos

sloreck said:
The larger the area running on one gauge the more efficient the rail transport is - the reason why 4' 8.5" came in to being in the USA during the ACW, this accelerated regauging in the North. Narrow gauge for specialized areas, and maybe trams is reasonable. Because Australia has no rail connection to anywhere else, it really doesn't matter what gauge is used as long as it is "standard". Another advantage to one gauge is that it allows more efficient use of rolling stock, locomotives and cars can be transferred/sold without the expense of reworking them etc.
Click to expand...
Even without a rail connection to other countries, conformity in track geometry, especially gauge, still makes a difference. I was told as a child that our steam locomotives were all imported, so it helped that we built to a gauge for which some overseas manufacturers were already tooled. It also allows trains built for different parts of a country to be more alike, especially in technical data. It could, for example, have allowed for common electric multiple unit train designs on all electrified suburban railway networks, not just Melbourne and Adelaide or Brisbane and Perth. Or different train models built for different networks could share a common bogie design, or at least have identical wheelsets.

Here is a blueprint of a typical train bogie:
bogie.png


The gauge of the track determines how long the axles must be. And a different axle length means the width of the bogie frame must differ. And if the gauge is narrower than standard, a standard electric traction motor won't even fit. We do have quite a few rail vehicle manufacturers in this country. There is Bombardier in Dandenong, an outer Melbourne suburb (formerly Commonwealth Engineering - Comeng), Alstom in Ballarat, E.D.I rail in Newcastle near Sydney, and A.B.B Walker in Maryborough, Queensland.
If we standardised on this one gauge, all our rail vehicle manufacturers would be tooled for that gauge, a larger market within this country for rolling stock of a common gauge.

Conformity may also mean a more efficient use of maintenance support equipment, this includes rail grinders (which reprofile the rails and remove irregularities), ballast cleaners and ballast tamping machines (the latter pack the ballast to make ballasted track more durable) and trucks with hi-rail adapters. The retractable wheelsets called hi-rail adapters are also gauge specific.
 

Myrtonos

Could rail travel have been more competitive had heavy rail across the mainland been standardised on one gauge?
 

how

Would this also have the knock on effect of making New Zealand also use 5'3" Gauge? Apparently this gauge was used in Canterbury before being switched in the 1870s, presumably during the Vogel infrastructure developments. Anyone know what impact this would have on New Zealand rails? Certainly the source for Locomotives will be different.
 

Myrtonos

I do not know that much about New Zealand's railways but I do know that both the North Island and the South Island railways have standardised on cape gauge. Railways of New Zealand have never needed to be interoperable with Australian railways.

I have noticed that there is or used to be narrow gauge where there is broad gauge. There were 765mm lines in both Victoria and South Australia. Heavy rail in Ireland is the same gauge as Victoria and South Australia and Ireland also used to have numerous narrow gauge railways, mostly 914 mm.
 
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