RAILWAYS –

• 138p. : ill. ; 27cm. First Edition. Signed by Author (inscription) #180625

• • Trans-Australian Railway
  • Transport. Railways. Australia. Trans-Australian Railway, 1912-1917
  • Railroads — Australia
  • Newspaper article inserted.
  • The Trans-Australian Railway, opened in 1917, runs from Port Augusta in South Australia to Kalgoorlie in Western Australia, crossing the Nullarbor Plain in the process. Built to 1435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in) standard gauge, its length is 1691 kilometres (1051 miles). As the only rail freight corridor between Western Australia and the eastern states, the line is economically and strategically important. The railway includes the world’s longest section of completely straight track.

    The inaugural passenger train service was known as the Great Western Express; later, it became the Trans-Australian.

    Until 1970, the Trans-Australian Railway had a 1067 mm (3 ft 6 in) narrow-gauge line at each end. With the completion of a standardisation project in that year, it became a component of the 4352 kilometres (2704 miles) Sydney–Perth rail corridor. As of 2024, two passenger services use the line, both of them experiential tourism services: the Indian Pacific for the entire length of the railway, and The Ghan between Port Augusta and Tarcoola, where it leaves the line to proceed north to Darwin.

  • In 1901, the six Australian colonies federated to form the Commonwealth of Australia. At that time, Perth, the capital of Western Australia, was isolated from the remaining Australian states by thousands of miles of desert terrain and the only practicable method of transport was by sea. The voyage across the notoriously rough Great Australian Bight was time-consuming, inconvenient and often uncomfortable. One of the inducements held out to Western Australians to join the new federation was the promise of a federally funded railway line linking Western Australia with the rest of the continent.^[2]

    In 1907, legislation was passed, allowing for the route to be surveyed. The survey, completed in 1909, endorsed a route from Port Augusta (the existing railhead at the head of Spencer Gulf in South Australia’s wheatfields) via Tarcoola to the gold mining centre of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia, a distance of 1,063 miles (1,711 km). The line was to be built to the standard gauge of 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm), even though the state railway systems at both ends were narrow gauge at the time. Its cost was estimated at £4,045,000, equivalent to A$642 million in 2022.