Railway in South Australia
The railway in South Australia is characterized by an abundant variety of gauges - even by Australian standards .
History of the route network
After an initial, significant opposition to the construction of railways, in a petition to Queen Victoria but one - culminated, was the first railway in Australia Pferdebahn and therefore does not "officially" performed as the first railway - in South Australia on broad gauge of 1600 mm (5 Feet 3 inches) in operation in 1854. The route connected the Murray River port of Goolwa with the sea port of Port Elliot . It was later extended to Victor Harbor and still operates as a tourist attraction today as the Victor Harbor Horse Drawn Tram . The first locomotive-drawn railroad in South Australia opened in 1856 between the city and port of Adelaide . Here the attempt by a private company to build the line had failed and the state took over the construction and operation on its own. This was the core of what would later become the state railway of South Australia, the South Australian Railways . The first three locomotives were supplied by William Fairbairn & Sons from Manchester and were named Adelaide , Victoria and Albert (after the British prince consort Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha ).
Broad gauge
Since the colonies were legally independent of each other before the amalgamation of the Australian federal state in 1901, the decision on the gauge in which the respective railroad was to be built was a matter for the individual colony. On July 27, 1852, a law was passed in the oldest and economically leading colony of New South Wales , which should be built its railway network in the broad gauge of 1600 mm. South Australia then decided - in order to maintain compatibility with the railway in New South Wales - to build its railways in this gauge as well. When New South Wales revised its decision shortly afterwards and opted for the standard gauge , South Australia could no longer change its decision in favor of the broad gauge, as rail systems had already been built in broad gauge and corresponding vehicles had been ordered. This legislative chaos has resulted in some of the troublesome rupture in the gauges of the railroads of South Australia.
The route network was primarily used to transport mining and agricultural products to the ports, but it also effectively connected the widely separated settlement centers for the first time in passenger transport. The network developed in a star shape from the capital Adelaide. In 1887 in Serviceton (Victoria) the connection to the - also broad-gauge - railway in Victoria was achieved for the first time . The Intercolonial Express , a direct connection between Melbourne and Adelaide, started on January 19, 1887 . The train was the first connection between two Australian capitals without having to change trains and it took 18 hours to cover the 900 km route. The train was later officially called the Adelaide Express , although it was called The Melbourne Express in South Australia and operated as a night train . Today it operates as The Overland and as a day train.
A second connection to Victoria was established in 1906. From 1915, this route crossed the border at Pinnaroo . The South Australian section of the line was switched to standard gauge in 1998, so that a gauge changing station was built in Pinnaroo . There are considerations to also detour the part of the route in Victoria. In 1937 the broad gauge reached Port Pirie, where it met the standard gauge Trans - Australian Railroad . The Adelaide – Port Pirie railway was changed to standard gauge in 1982.
Cape Track
In the parts of the country far away from the capital, the construction of the railways in Cape Gauge began , especially with branch lines from the ports to the hinterland. The routes were initially understood as isolated projects, not as building blocks for a future network. Since the settlement here was much thinner than in the vicinity of the capital, the cheaper version in Cape Gauge was chosen for its construction, without taking into account the difficulties this would cause in the future. Nevertheless, narrow-gauge networks emerged from these beginnings in the course of time. When wide and narrow gauge finally met in 1880 in Terowie station , later in Hamley Bridge , Wolseley and Mount Gambier stations , there were considerable problems and costs for through traffic. The track gauge problem was solved by most of the narrow gauge lines 1953-1956 to broad gauge in the south of the state umgespurt were. The narrow-gauge railways in the northern part of the country were partially replaced by wide or standard-gauge lines or operations were discontinued. Only the routes starting from Port Lincoln, which were never connected to the rest of the network, remained as a larger network. The first line was put into operation in 1908 and the network was expanded to around 800 km by 1950. The first narrow-gauge lines were:
- 1870 the line from Port Wakefield to Balaklava .
- In 1876 the line from Kingston to Naracoorte opened.
- 1879 the Beachport - Millicent and Mount Gambier route
- In 1887 a connection from Mount Gambier to Naracoorte and Wolseley (gauge changing station on the Melbourne – Adelaide railway line ) was created.
- In 1888 the line from Port Pirie to Broken Hill in New South Wales was completed, which was not reached by the state's own standard-gauge railway from New South Wales until 1919. Since New South Wales did not allow the South Australian State Railways to operate a railway on its territory, the section of the route there was operated by the private Silverton Tramway .
Other ports from which Cape-gauge railways opened up the hinterland were Port Augusta , Port Lincoln , Beachport , Kingston SE and Wallaroo (South Australia) .
The most ambitious narrow-gauge project from 1879 onwards was the attempt to advance with it to Darwin in the Northern Territory . With the Great Northern Railway begun for this purpose and the corresponding project of the North Australian Railway , which was driven south from Darwin, South Australia had taken over. In 1911 the railway ceded to the Australian Confederation , which then took over economic responsibility for the route, subsequently integrated it into its Commonwealth Railways , operated it itself from 1926 and reached Alice Springs by 1929, after a total of 50 years of construction , where the project finally got stuck. The line was abandoned in 1981 when the Central Australian Railroad started operating.
Standard gauge
In 1901 the six previously autonomous Australian colonies united to form the Australian Confederation. The condition for the accession of Western Australia was the promise of the other colonies that the federal government would build a railway that would connect the settlement center of the colony around its capital Perth , which is isolated from the rest of the country, with the other settlement centers of the new state in the south and east of the continent. This Trans-Australian Railroad was made in standard gauge and put into operation on October 17, 1917. It ran from Kalgoorlie in Western Australia to Port Augusta in South Australia. This gave South Australia a third gauge for main lines. At both ends of the connection, different-gauge railways were connected, in South Australia initially broad gauge. Travelers had to change trains, goods had to be reloaded.
Adaptation measures
In 1937, the eastern end of the Trans-Australian Railroad was extended in standard gauge to Port Pirie . This saved passengers from having to switch to the broad gauge. You could now switch to the narrow gauge as far as Broken Hill. At the same time, three gauges now met in Port Pirie station. In 1970 a continuous standard gauge track coming from New South Wales reached Port Pirie. In 1980, the southern section of the standard gauge Central Australian Railway was opened, replacing the old narrow gauge line to Alice Springs. In 1982, the route (Port Pirie-) Crystal Brook Adelaide was transferred to standard gauge and 1995 the route between the two capitals Adelaide and Melbourne on standard gauge umgespurt .
Rail transport
The state-owned South Australian Railways was initially the operator of most routes. It was taken over by Commonwealth Railways in 1978 in an attempt to bring all of Australia's railways under the federal umbrella. But since apart from these two companies only the railroad in Tasmania joined this project, it remained a torso . The merger was nevertheless named Australian National Railways (ANR), better known as Australian National . When it was dissolved in 1992, the freight transport and freight cars were transferred to the National Rail Corporation (NR) in 1992 , the railway in South Australia was sold to the Australian Southern Railroad , and long-distance passenger transport was taken over by the Great Southern Railway . Today this is limited to the trains The Overland (Adelaide-Melbourne), Indian Pacific ( Sydney- Perth) via Adelaide and The Ghan (Adelaide-Darwin). TransAdelaide operates local transport in the greater Adelaide area . Freight transport is now operated by the Australian Railroad Group , Pacific National , QRNational , FreightLink and SCT Logistics , but has declined sharply since road transport of grain was permitted in the late 1980s.
Museum facilities
Port Adelaide is home to the Australian National Railway Museum , the largest railroad museum in Australia.
The Pichi Richi Railway operates the section between Quorn and Port Augusta of the former Great Northern Railway as a museum railway . The railway is named after the Pichi Richi Pass , which the railway crosses.
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literature
- Anon: The bay line. Adelaide 1979.
- WH Callaghan: The Overland Railway . St James 1992.
- Sampson and KJ Bird, RE Fluck: Steam locomotives and railcars of the South Australian Railways . Roseworthy. 1986.
- R. Jennings: Line clear: 100 years of train working Adelaide service tone. Roseworthy. 1986.
- D. Mack: Little coastal railways of the Adelaide plains. Camden Park 1986.
- S. McNicol: SAR railcars. Elizabeth 1989.
- G. Pantlin, J. Sargent (Ed.): Railway stations in greater metropolitan Adelaide. Melbourne. 2005.
- Jim Powe: Trains and Railways of Australia . 2nd ed. Sydney 2009. ISBN 9781741109023
- J. Richardson: Along the line in South Australia. Canberra City 1964
- J. Richardson: Along the line 2. Canberra City 1964.
- R. Sampson: Rails round Adelaide. Walkerville 1978.
Web links
- National Rail Museum - history of rail in South Australia
- Peninsula Pioneer - history of the railways of Eyre Peninsula
- Railpage Australia - discussion forums and news
- RailSA - discussion forums and news
- South Australian Railway Page
- SAR Weekly Notices and Annual Report indexes
