Railroad in Tasmania
The railroad in Tasmania consists of a narrow gauge network in Cape gauge (1067 mm), which connects all major settlement centers of Tasmania . Today only freight trains run , usually as block trains . Passenger traffic was stopped in 1978. In some sections, however, there are museum trains .
history
The main routes
The first route opened in Tasmania ran from Deloraine to Launceston . It was built as a broad gauge line (1600 mm) and financed by guarantees from neighboring landowners who expected advantages from a railway and was opened on February 10, 1871. The company went bankrupt in 1872 and was taken over by the Tasmanian government on October 31, 1873. The government's attempt to honor the guarantees of the neighboring landowners met with considerable resistance.
On March 1, 1876, the main line Hobart - Evandale (near Launceston) was opened. It was built in Cape Lane by the Tasmanian government, operated by the Tasmanian Main Line Company and connected to the existing line to Deloraine in the Western Junction station on November 1 of the same year with an extension . There was now a three-rail track between Western Junction and Launceston , which was extended to Deloraine until March 17, 1885 and also allowed through traffic in Cape Gauge to go there. By August 18, 1888, the broad gauge track was dismantled and the gauging of the line was thus completed. On May 30, 1885, the network reached Devonport . In 1890, the Tasmanian Government acquired the Tasmanian Main Line Company and created the Tasmanian Government Railways . On April 15, 1901, the network was extended to Burnie and was able to connect there to the Emu Bay Railway , which had been built by the operators of the mines there from Zeehan and put into operation on December 21, 1900. In 1913 there was an expansion of the state network to Wynyard , which was extended to Wiltshire Junction in 1922, where it was connected to the line from Stanley to Smithton .
The main lines were operated by Tasmanian Government Railways until 1975 . That year the operation was taken over by the Australian National Railways Commission and renamed TasRail . The Australian National Railways Commission brought together the Commonwealth Railways , the long- distance railroad of South Australia and the Tasmanian State Railways. TasRail was sold to Australian Transport Network Limited in November 1997 , a cooperation between the New Zealand railroad company Trans Rail and the US railroad company Wisconsin Central . In 1998 the Emu Bay Railway along the west coast of the island was bought by the Australian Transport Network and legally merged with the rest of the network. When Canadian National took over Wisconsin Central and Toll Holdings took over Trans Rail in 2003 , all overseas holdings were sold. TasRail's rail operations were transferred to Pacific National .
Branch lines
- Parattah – Oatlands, 1885 (closed 1949)
- Conara Junction (on the Hobart – Launceston mainline) - St Marys , 1886
- Derwent Valley Line : Bridgewater (now a suburb of Hobart) –New Norfolk, 1887, extended to Glenora in 1888 and to Kallista in 1936
- Launceston– Scottsdale , 1889, extended to Branxholm in 1911 and Herrick in 1919
- Deloraine (Lemana Junction) –Mole Creek, 1890 (closed 1985)
- Don Junction – Paloona, 1916, extended to Barrington in 1923 (closed in 1963). In 1976 the Don Junction – Don Township section was reopened.
- Launceston – Bell Bay, 1974 (industrial connection). For this section there were considerations to expand it to standard gauge in order to enable train traffic between the mainland and Launceston. The plans were not pursued any further.
Island operations
In addition to the closed network, there were individual island operations :
- Bellerive – Sorell, 1892 (closed 1926)
- Zeehan - Strahan (then: Regatta Point), 1892. The line was connected to the entire Tasmanian network in 1901 after the opening of the Emu Bay Railway and lost its status as an island operation.
- North Mount Lyell Railway
System decay
The most famous train in Tasmania was the Tasman Limited , which operated since 1954 and was discontinued in 1978. The deterioration was partly caused by the lack of investment in technology and the system continued to operate as it did in the heyday of rail traffic. There were over a hundred train stations and a wide range. The railway was considered to be the one with the best service in Australia . The associated high workforce was no longer economical with the decline in traffic. Reforms started too late, so that ultimately even the core business had to be cut. Even switching to diesel multiple units could not help in the long run.
In 1970 Hobart train station was still handling around 70 trains a day. But as early as 1975 the rail-bound public transport of the Tasmanian Government Railways in Hobart and the surrounding area was given up, with the transition of the Tasmanian Government Railways to the TasRail in 1978 the passenger traffic ceased altogether. Hobart Railway Station was demolished and converted into a parking lot.
today
The railway infrastructure is owned by the Tasmanian state, with maintenance work being outsourced. In September 2009, the rail traffic , which had previously been run by Pacific National , was transferred back to the state-owned TasRail . The performance of the system is low today: the block distances between the trains are 10 to 15 kilometers. Rail freight traffic is valued, however, as it relieves road traffic in Tasmania by many thousands of truck trips per year. In freight transport - the last remaining mode of transport alongside some museum transports - the main cargo is cement , which is transported from Railton to Devonport . Other goods transported by rail are coal , wood , containers and paper .
literature
- HK Atkinson: Railway Tickets of Tasmania . 1991, ISBN 0-9598718-7-X .
- Howard Quinlan, John R. Newland: Australian Railway Routes 1854-2000 . Ed .: Australian Railway Historical Society - New South Wales Division, ISBN 0-909650-49-7 .
swell
The basic information was transferred from the English language Wikipedia and comes from:
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Don River Railway
- ↑ AusLink Network Corridors ( Memento of the original from July 19, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
