Rail rolls out north and south

At the end of 2008 the Australian Government announced that it planned to invest up to $1.2 billion into the Australian Rail Track Corporation (ARTC) to facilitate a range of major projects to upgrade the nation’s rail freight network.

This investment falls under the Government’s Nation Building – Economic Stimulus Plan (NB-ESP).

As part of this program, ARTC has supplemented capital provided under the NB – ESP, to undertake a major program of capacity expansion works along the rail corridors connecting Hunter Valley coal mines to the Port of Newcastle worth over $1 billion.

A large portion of the Government investment also boosted ARTC’s work in upgrading the freight rail links between Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne on the North South corridor.

Government funding under the NB-ESP is also supporting the resurgence in freight rail between the East Coast capital cities and continued growth of coal exports in the Hunter Valley.

In January 2010 ARTC, with support from the NB – ESP, completed the $55.8m upgrade of the link between the Queensland border and Acacia Ridge.

The project involved replacing old timber sleepers with 105,000 new concrete sleepers along with new rail and signal infrastructure. It also created around 120 new jobs.

ARTC now has a long term lease of this link from the Queensland Government. This means that for the first time Australia has a truly national single standard gauge freight rail network connecting all the mainland states, representing a significant improvement to the efficiency and competitiveness of freight rail.

Many other key projects have been completed, with the new timetables already revealing savings in transit times.

Following the release of a new ‘first stage’ timetable, run times on the main North line between Sydney and Brisbane have already seen significant reductions in transit time. Steel trains running from Morandoo in NSW to Acacia Ridge over the Queensland border have had their average transit time reduced by 2 hours 22 minutes to 17 hours 34 minutes, and on the return journey the average transit time has been reduced by 1 hr 39 minutes to 16 hours 1 minute.

Transit times for Intermodal Superfreighter trains transporting consumer and industrial goods between Islington Junction in NSW to Acacia Ridge in Queensland have been reduced by 1 hr 19 minutes to 14 hours 37 minutes, and on the return journey the average transit time has been reduced by 1 hr to 14 hours 45 minutes.

ARTC have also undertaken efficiency improvement works on lines to the south of Sydney, including a $5.5 million train control modernisation program involving the replacement of 70 old style signals with 60 colour Light Emitting Diode (LED) signals on the Picton to Cunningar sections.

ARTC Chief Executive Officer, David Marchant said the upgrade of the signal technology builds on the rail infrastructure construction work and will increase efficiency on the line as well as increase capacity and shorten transit times.

"ARTC is pushing forward with our plans to upgrade the Brisbane-Sydney-Melbourne corridor and make rail transport more competitive," Mr Marchant said.

“The equation is very simple – each 1500 metre long train can replace 100 semi- trailers and that means fewer trucks on our major roads and less greenhouse gas emissions," he said.

The upgrade of the North South rail corridor is part of the Government’s overall strategy to cut the transit time from Melbourne to Sydney to as low as 10 hours 40 minutes and 15 hours 35 minutes between Sydney and Brisbane.

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