brumby33 wrote: ↑Sat Jan 20, 2024 11:41 pm
44 year old XPT train still takes the Pensioners and backpackers up beyond Grafton and Casino. Those poor old trains have enough kms on them to take them to Pluto and back and they don't look like they're going to replace them anytime soon. Even when new, the rail lines were never safe enough to benefit a train such as the XPT. There's a section of rail around Braunstone, South of Grafton, that they can get up to 145kph but then have to slow down to 70kph because the rail has a bend in it down the bottom of the run, I know this because I've travelled up front in the XPT with my Father who drove them between Taree and Grafton and Dad loved to drive them but agreed, the rail isn't suitable for a train like this, they were capable of up to 180kph if they had the right rail lines to do it.
Cheers
brumby33
I’m old enough to have done the Brisbane to Sydney (and return) a few times over the years.
It’s actually quite a pleasant journey on the XPT train but it does take about 14 hours.
And you do get the strong impression that much of the way, the speed potential of the service is fundamentally restricted by the winding nature of the rail corridor, particularly north of Newcastle and up to about Port Macquarie
I actually caught this train from Brisbane to Coffs Harbour rather than drive my nice little car back in 1996 - because I worked out that it was definitely going to be faster than road and cost about the same (for 2 adults)
Since then the NSW and Australian Gov have spent billions on the Motorway from NSW border to Coffs - spurred on by the disastrous Bus crashes that occurred just over 30 yrs ago.
so it might be faster to drive in 2024
But I actually doubt that it would be much faster because the flip side of the equation is that congestion between Brisbane and the NSW border has been exponential since 1996 and on average it takes half an hour longer to get to southern Gold Coast from Brisbane by road than it did 30 yr ago
I can actually vividly recall hiring a car in Coffs and driving north towards Grafton on that holiday, looking for some classic railway bridges to photograph.
And then seeing the day’s XPT passenger train whizzing along the straight section of line at what I guessed was about 130 km/hr.
As far as I know this interstate line carries 6 freight trains per day but only 2 passenger services.
It’s actually a very remarkable engineering feat from Casino/Kyogle to Brisbane, I believe that construction started in 1922 and took a few years to complete
It’s even more remarkable that the Queensland and NSW governments were able to agree to a plan to fund it and build it, since they haven’t been able to agree on lots of other things since those days