Rearm the ANZACs for the Pacific War.

[McPherson]

The Budget and priority of Manhattan is in a totally different league.

ALCAN hwy is a road, Lexi same,
Australia already has a road, so what?

Heavy use truck highways like ALCAN through tundra are what? Flotation... flotation... flotation. Roadbed and drainage. Also expensive. And in WWII logic where float is cheaper than rail, unnecessary by $ logic. But, you might think railroad roadbed is not a civil engineering equivalent problem? And why did the Americans arm-twist Ottawa? Because military logic is not $ logic. The supply LLOC to Alaska for the USAAF would be kind of difficult without ALCAN. And of course it is still there.

So Adelaide to Darwin in the 1930s would be ... militarily (RAAF) "smart".

 

[marathag]

The down side is logistics and training.

For a couple of 100, it’s just not worth it

If it's just as effective on the battlefield, it's cheaper to build, lighter and fewer crew, that means it's a winner, and then other factories convert over

 

[Colonel Grubb]

The need for concrete sleepers for the top half of Alice to Darwin, so we don’t give a free feed to top end termites.

They were planning on using steel sleepers in the 1930s. Not sure of the specifics, but if was like some of the other lines in North Queensland, then most likely every second or third sleeper would be steel.

As I mentioned... Army Corps of Engineers. The gang that brought you the ALCAN highway, the Ledo Road and Project MANHATTAN. This project is not that hard.

Its definitely more than possible and not beyond the realms of fiscal possibility - it comes down to who pays for it. This was the sticking point for the Commonwealth and Queensland governments between the 1920s -1950s. It would have been quite feasible if they kept the 'branch-line'/development standard for the line - i.e. little ballast, minimal earthworks, designed for 8 tonne axle loading (the main branch-line locomotive in Queensland was the PB15) and 42lb rail. I'm not sure how far north C17 locomotives could work during the war - they themselves were the heaviest loco permitted north of Mackay until 1948.

Bridges are going to be the main obstacle, but that's where, if its built during the war, the US forces and the Engineers (and all their mechanization) are going to make it happen - if the will is there.

MacArthur volunteered to supply US men and material for work in 42-43 to build the line, and your right, if Coral Sea pans out differently, its much more likely.

The other issue is motive power and rollingstock - there's going to be pretty bad shortages, especially if the Commonwealth Land Transport Board still completely bollocks up the Australian Standard Garratt project and burn the relationship with the Queensland railways. The US can supply more (as they did OTL)...

 

[Father Maryland]

They were planning on using steel sleepers in the 1930s. Not sure of the specifics, but if was like some of the other lines in North Queensland, then most likely every second or third sleeper would be steel.

Could they have used concrete rail ties? I think that has been tried before and is becoming more common these days?

 

[Colonel Grubb]

Could they have used concrete rail ties? I think that has been tried before and is becoming more common these days?

I doubt it, I would say its way to early for them to adopt these. I can't recall seeing their use until much much later. Good quality hardwood is available and easy to get - and would hopefully last until the end of hostilities and the post-war modernization plans can be implemented. And combined with steel sleepering would probably see it through enough.

 

[Capt Thunderbolt]

They were planning on using steel sleepers in the 1930s. Not sure of the specifics, but if was like some of the other lines in North Queensland, then most likely every second or third sleeper would be steel.

That is the other option, but once you get into northern savanna on the other side of the Divide, you need all steel. Most of the FNQ lines are coastal or just to the divide. Mt Isa the exception, but south of the Wet.

Finding steel for rails alone would be pushing it in war time.

It would have been quite feasible if they kept the 'branch-line'/development standard for the line - i.e. little ballast, minimal earthworks, designed for 8 tonne axle loading (the main branch-line locomotive in Queensland was the PB15) and 42lb rail. I'm not sure how far north C17 locomotives could work during the war - they themselves were the heaviest loco permitted north of Mackay until 1948.

That’s the paradox !
Most of the line Nth of Mackay was for light good and cane. Minimal prep and cheap narrow gauge. You really needed standard gauge (and still do), up the Qld coast and Mt Isa.(and through to Tenant Ck).

 

[Colonel Grubb]

That is the other option, but once you get into northern savanna on the other side of the Divide, you need all steel. Most of the FNQ lines are coastal or just to the divide. Mt Isa the exception, but south of the Wet.

Finding steel for rails alone would be pushing it in war time.

That’s the paradox !
Most of the line Nth of Mackay was for light good and cane. Minimal prep and cheap narrow gauge. You really needed standard gauge (and still do), up the Qld coast and Mt Isa.(and through to Tenant Ck).

Agree. Hence, why I find the the proposals for the missing link and other development lines such an interesting part of the history of the network and more broadly the state.

Only post war did they start to seriously upgrade the North Coast line. From memory it took until the 1950s to really start resolve issues on the line to Mt Isa. Steel is going to be an issue unless General MacArthur brings it with him!

 

[Capt Thunderbolt]

Heavy use truck highways like ALCAN through tundra are what? Flotation... flotation... flotation. Roadbed and drainage. Also expensive. And in WWII logic where float is cheaper than rail, unnecessary by $ logic. But, you might think railroad roadbed is not a civil engineering equivalent problem? And why did the Americans arm-twist Ottawa? Because military logic is not $ logic. The supply LLOC to Alaska for the USAAF would be kind of difficult without ALCAN. And of course it is still there.

So Adelaide to Darwin in the 1930s would be ... militarily (RAAF) "smart".

I was talking rail, you digressed into a Strawman about roads

The Nth-sth road (Stuart hwy), is a very interesting and changing road build. It is both water logged and desert dust bowl alternating.

Floatation is great, but the monsoon rains wash them away, regardless of drainage. Dry season the opposite. The road turned to dust, corrugated and pot holed, and vibrated and broke vehicles and drivers.

Without black top the road was speed limited throughout the war.

 

[Capt Thunderbolt]

Agree. Hence, why I find the the proposals for the missing link and other development lines such an interesting part of the history of the network and more broadly the state.

Only post war did they start to seriously upgrade the North Coast line. From memory it took until the 1950s to really start resolve issues on the line to Mt Isa. Steel is going to be an issue unless General MacArthur brings it with him!

And in the bigger picture,..

Darwin is an outpost. If the Japanese take it, it’s still a 1000 miles of crossing the continent to get anywhere. The next node is Tenant. South and south east is via here!

There is nothing on the west coast worthwhile till Perth, and if there going there, it’s by ship.

FNQ is the vital terrain, cairns and Townsville. The Coral sea and surrounding islands is the battleground

The US is not building a line to nowhere

 

[Jellico]

Clearly we need to convince the Americans to pay for a Bradfield scheme to provide the economic reason to build a railway.

 

[Rickshaw]

As I mentioned... Army Corps of Engineers. The gang that brought you the ALCAN highway, the Ledo Road and Project MANHATTAN. This project is not that hard.

You have never left your home have you? The NT is an environment unlike all others. You can have 100% humidity during the Wet and you can have 25% or less during the Dry. You have a massive number of white ants which just love ordinary timber. You are located several thousand kilometres from civilisation.

Crews in Leopard tanks used to pass out during the Dry because their vehicles were unairconditioned and they were expected to still man them. They invented all sorts of "work arounds" the most successful of which were umbrellas over the turret (I mean large, square, cotton umbrellas like they have over footpath cafes' seats and tables) and stripping down to their underwear and having two or three litre water bottle beside their seats. It was possible but only just. The crews of vehicles which drove from Alice Springs (in the centre of Australia) to Darwin during the war were limited as to what speed they could do it in order to save rubber on their tyres. They had a limit of 15 mph for fifteen hundred miles. Darwin was isolated. Really isolated.

 

[Colonel Grubb]

And in the bigger picture,..

Darwin is an outpost. If the Japanese take it, it’s still a 1000 miles of crossing the continent to get anywhere. The next node is Tenant. South and south east is via here!

There is nothing on the west coast worthwhile till Perth, and if there going there, it’s by ship.

FNQ is the vital terrain, cairns and Townsville. The Coral sea and surrounding islands is the battleground

The US is not building a line to nowhere

Hence why pre-war the focus was economic development of northern Australia - and vague notions about defence utility were kept vague - it seemed like something handy to have, but needed to have clear economic goals.

During the war, there was consideration for completing the link. MacArthur advocated it, but seems to have shifted after the likes of Coral Sea. The Commonwealth and armed forces were interested but there were other priorities than this.
In 1942, General Douglas MacArthur proposed building a rail link from Cloncurry in Queensland's north-west to Darwin.
Even though he proposed to build it free of charge using American steel and labour, it was rejected by the Australian government, Mr Compton said.
https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/na...-mt-isa-darwin-rail-link-20080704-gea3r2.html - unfortunately I can't find a great deal more about what MacArthurs actual planning was - if anything more than napkin musings.

And in any event, the The Allied Works Council sealed the roads connecting the railheads (Alice, Isa and Larrimah) with a single vehicle strip of bitumen...

 

[McPherson]

I was talking rail, you digressed into a Strawman about roads

The Nth-sth road (Stuart hwy), is a very interesting and changing road build. It is both water logged and desert dust bowl alternating.

Floatation is great, but the monsoon rains wash them away, regardless of drainage. Dry season the opposite. The road turned to dust, corrugated and pot holed, and vibrated and broke vehicles and drivers.

Without black top the road was speed limited throughout the war.

I discussed flotation and drainage for a roadbed under extremely difficult environmental conditions. Truck road or railroad. If the monsoon hit...

Spoiler: What one can learn from Mahan. Why Darwin and a railroad means the Australians will have an easier time with their land campaigns in Papua New Guinea.

JUNEAU

Spoiler: What one can learn from Mahan. Why Darwin and a railroad means the Australians will have an easier time with their land campaigns in Papua New Guinea.

, Alaska (AP) — Remnants of Pacific Hurricane Oho battered Alaska's southeast coast on Friday, the latest unusual weather event to hit a state that so far this year has dealt with a lack ...
In rare event, remnants of Pacific hurricane hit Alaska ...

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattl...ic Hurricane,this year has dealt with a lack

Alaska Highway Project Jukebox

I would also expect that civil engineers who route highways from Chicago to Los Angeles would know something about "water logged" and desert dust bowl. Just getting across the American southwest would be something of a major challenge.

road, Route 66, USA, Highway, Map, North America, Canada ..

Somewhat current: The Ghan Expedition | Australia Outback Rail Travel | Goway

Mt. Isa to Tenant Creek is a "difficult" segment. It cannot be denied that it would be a challenge in 1942. Since I am trying to figure out an ATL storyline that involves the building of the Adelaide to Darwin route, and I have covered this issue in "Those Marvelous Tin Fish" when I discussed the extremely difficult logistics the Australians and Americans faced in the Pacific War, since everything had to be floated either from Pearl or up the Australian east coast through the Solomon Sea and all of it trying to crack into the Bismarck Sea?

CARTWHEEL was expensive in time and LIVES. Just the naval warfare to crack that problem cost hundreds of lives and dozens of ships.

Source:
Papua governor asks Indonesia to withdraw troops

Blank map of Australia and parts of Indonesia by DinoSpain ... (Additional work by McPherson).

The thing is that with two axes of supply and two fronts, the Japanese cannot use Rabaul as a plug to hold up the Allies for TWO YEARS. Airpower is a form of sea-power. But to use it (Darwin) one has to have a LLOC and the logical place for a LLOC is a route beyond Japanese aviation reach.

The Queensland route if the Japanese could raid into Coral Sea, is vulnerable. The route using the CAR assets is relatively invulnerable. There is a military logic at play here.

Planes take 90 days to build and an aircrew takes 180 days to train at a minimum. A ship takes 600-700 days (cruiser or aircraft carrier) and a crew takes 150-250 days to train. Now add up the costs and time delays with all the ships and crews lost and the soldiers killed during CARTWHEEL.

And add that northern Australia is taking an air beating because the supply situation is as screwed up as I illustrated above?

But Darwin is a backwater. The elbow pier (submarines) is wiped. And the campaign in New Guinea has to round the horn at Milne Bay and leapfrog and batter into the Bismarck Sea, because there was no way to air bridge into New Guinea from THE WEST.

Mahan 101. Land lines of communication to a port are just as important as control of sea access provided by that port's support of a fleet.

 

[Rickshaw]

When people like Macarthur offer "US labour and steel" he was actually offering Black US labour. The Australian Government didn't want that. They were still subject to the White Australia Policy and they didn't like the idea of black soldiers, even from an ally like the US coming into Australian society. There were problems whenever the US used Black labour downunder. I have read frequent mention of the arrival of Black soldiers to Queensland. They were actually quite well liked by the majority of the population and welcomed but the Government and the social hierarchy which had invested so much time in making sure that people of colour were marginalised weren't happy with them. They had little time for the Indigenous Australians who they saw as an "embarrassment". They were largely regarded as "fauna" by some of the states, rather than human beings and were not counted in the census because they were seen as "non-productive".

In the Northern Territory, there were fears that they would support any Japanese landing and there were serious proposals to massacre them all. Of course, in reality, they supported the rural industries, most particularly the cattle one and they were quite productive, even if exploited by the White settlers. In the Northern Territory again, the massive movement of so many White settlers from "down south" meant that both they and the Indigenous Australians encountered one another and observed their circumstances for the first time. It was the Australian Army who saw them as a resource and did so much to improve their lot that the local landowners objected to it, seeing that it would be too expensive to maintain that level of living once the Army left.

 

[Capt Thunderbolt]

I would also expect that civil engineers who route highways from Chicago to Los Angeles would know something about "water logged" and desert dust bowl. Just getting across the American southwest would be something of a major challenge.

Even the modern Ghan built this century has had problems.

March 4, 2007
Heavy rain has washed away a section of the Adelaide-to-Darwin railway line overnight, with repairs expected to take up to one week.

Northern Territory emergency services said a three to five kilometre section of the rail line between the town of Adelaide River and Darwin had been washed out.

"It is expected to take up to one week to repair and until works are completed freight trains and the Ghan will terminate at Katherine," an emergency services spokesperson said in a statement.

Blank map of Australia and parts of Indonesia by DinoSpain on DeviantArt

www.deviantart.com

The Torres Straight is a ships grave yard. Even today pilots guide ships through.

https://www.amsa.gov.au/sites/default/files/styles/website_scaled_image/public/torres_strait_large.jpg?itok=YGukUi9f

 

[Capt Thunderbolt]

When people like Macarthur offer "US labour and steel" he was actually offering Black US labour. The Australian Government didn't want that. They were still subject to the White Australia Policy and they didn't like the idea of black soldiers, even from an ally like the US coming into Australian society. There were problems whenever the US used Black labour downunder. I have read frequent mention of the arrival of Black soldiers to Queensland. They were actually quite well liked by the majority of the population and welcomed but the Government and the social hierarchy which had invested so much time in making sure that people of colour were marginalised weren't happy with them. They had little time for the Indigenous Australians who they saw as an "embarrassment". They were largely regarded as "fauna" by some of the states, rather than human beings and were not counted in the census because they were seen as "non-productive".

In the Northern Territory, there were fears that they would support any Japanese landing and there were serious proposals to massacre them all. Of course, in reality, they supported the rural industries, most particularly the cattle one and they were quite productive, even if exploited by the White settlers. In the Northern Territory again, the massive movement of so many White settlers from "down south" meant that both they and the Indigenous Australians encountered one another and observed their circumstances for the first time. It was the Australian Army who saw them as a resource and did so much to improve their lot that the local landowners objected to it, seeing that it would be too expensive to maintain that level of living once the Army left.

And Australia had the policy of paying its own way.

Right until Vietnam, Australia paid for all war stores, munitions, etc.

If the US had paid, there was always the fear post war America would demand rights to access and profit.

 

[marathag]

You have never left your home have you? The NT is an environment unlike all others. You can have 100% humidity during the Wet and you can have 25% or less during the Dry. You have a massive number of white ants which just love ordinary timber. You are located several thousand kilometres from civilisation.

Sounds like Fort Irwin in the Mojave Desert, though 'civilization' such as it is, is closer

Much of the desert southwest, railroad ties were ate up quickly by rot and insects, including termites.
Creosoted ties from Osage Orange or Red Ironwood could last decades. US could build railroads across inhospitable territory when there was economic incentive

 

[McPherson]

Even the modern Ghan built this century has had problems.

March 4, 2007
Heavy rain has washed away a section of the Adelaide-to-Darwin railway line overnight, with repairs expected to take up to one week.

Northern Territory emergency services said a three to five kilometre section of the rail line between the town of Adelaide River and Darwin had been washed out.

"It is expected to take up to one week to repair and until works are completed freight trains and the Ghan will terminate at Katherine," an emergency services spokesperson said in a statement.

The Torres Straight is a ships grave yard. Even today pilots guide ships through.

https://www.amsa.gov.au/sites/default/files/styles/website_scaled_image/public/torres_strait_large.jpg?itok=YGukUi9f

Washouts is not unknown in the American southwest, neither is rockslides or avalanches, etc.. This can be found in many routes on Earth, not just Australia or North America.

The waters around Cuba are not exactly free navigation. And there is the Bermuda Triangle, which is a real ship's graveyard.

Anyway, the Torres Straits can be piloted through, and the United States Navy has been known to be a bit on the "crazy" side (Damn the torpedoes, Full speed ahead... Mines? They are too deep. Proceed, Gridley.)

 

[Colonel Grubb]

When people like Macarthur offer "US labour and steel" he was actually offering Black US labour. The Australian Government didn't want that. They were still subject to the White Australia Policy and they didn't like the idea of black soldiers, even from an ally like the US coming into Australian society. There were problems whenever the US used Black labour downunder. I have read frequent mention of the arrival of Black soldiers to Queensland. They were actually quite well liked by the majority of the population and welcomed but the Government and the social hierarchy which had invested so much time in making sure that people of colour were marginalised weren't happy with them. They had little time for the Indigenous Australians who they saw as an "embarrassment". They were largely regarded as "fauna" by some of the states, rather than human beings and were not counted in the census because they were seen as "non-productive".

Its an area of research I've been meaning to get stuck into - which is a shame as I've neglected it given I'm 10 minutes from the national archives and national library here. I'll go back and read my copy of the Battle of Brisbane which from memory talks about similar issues.

 

[Rickshaw]

Sounds like Fort Irwin in the Mojave Desert, though 'civilization' such as it is, is closer

Much of the desert southwest, railroad ties were ate up quickly by rot and insects, including termites.
Creosoted ties from Osage Orange or Red Ironwood could last decades. US could build railroads across inhospitable territory when there was economic incentive

Australia has a unique spot in the food chain especially for White Ants. They eat all the wood which is normally too hard for normal animals to consume so many animals consume the White Ants. Much easier to have someone else consume the wood first. That is why we have so many different variations on ant eaters. We have spiders, snakes, lizards, Echidnas and so on all who eat ants.