Rail transport in Queensland

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Rail transport in Queensland, has a long history, with the first line opening in 1865.

The first line was surveyed while the colony was still part of New South Wales, but the colony of Queensland had separated before railway proposals became really serious. At that time, the colony had a tiny (Europena) population in a vast territory of 1.8 million square kilometres, and the burning question was how to build inexpensive and affordable railways.

[edit] Narrow gauge

The naiscent Queensland Railways was persuaded that the way to build low cost railways was to use a narrower gauge than the standard gauge of 1435mm. A prototype existed in Norway. The proposed narrow gauge railway would have very sharp curves of 5 chains (100 metres) on the long climb to Toowoomba at about 900m above sea level. If the railway could only manage a top speed on 20 miles per hour, then that would do for a hundred years.

The choice of the non-standard narrow gauge was and still is controversial, and the choice was approved very narrowly by parliament.

Thus the die was cast for a large narrow gauge system, which was copied by many other countries. A hundred and fifty years later, Queensland is still sparsely populated (4 million in 2005), but many trains hauling coal are some of the longest and heaviest in the world.

[edit] Counterproductive

The first line to Toowoomba, which was the centre of the gauge debate, proved expensive to operated because the light rails limited the weight of the rails and indirectly the tractive effort of the locomotives, while the sharp curves also limited the size of the locomotives. Narrow tunnels which could not easily be enlarge while traffic continued to operate, also limited the size of the locomotives. Steep grades also limited train loads. The result was very small locomotives hauling tiny loads, defeating the purpose of railways which economies of scale. Double locomotives which were operated by a single crew such as the Fairlie were not a success because of the sharp curves. Beyer-Garatt locomotives 90 years later were more successful.

Beyond the Toowoomba line streched the western plains, where tunnels and gradients and curves were not a problem.

What should have been done was to lay the Toowoomba line with as heavy rail as possible, capable of handling locomotives as heavy as possible, with curves reasonably gentle to allow these locomotives as powerful as possible to have a long wheel base with only a small risk of derailement on curves. The gradients would be made a little steeper as a trade off for those gentler curves. Beyond the Toowoomba line, rails and locomotives would be lighter and thus cheaper, with a change of locomotives at the boundary of the heavier and lighter track.

Operating costs on the Range section would be reduced by the ability to run bigger but fewer trains. A solution to the Range railway using heavy track just for the range is more or less independent of gauge, and therefore if this arrangement had been adopted, a change of gauge would have not been needed.

Had a standard gauge Queensland rail met the New South Wales one, the gauge would have been the same, but the axle load would have been lighter in Queensland, allowing QR trains into NSW but not necessarily the other way around.

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