Railway Digest Magazine September 2016 Back Issue

Beautiful one day…
Queensland is a vast state, with an interesting variety of rail operations over three different gauges, including one of the largest 1067mm gauge networks in the world. We present some recent images from around the ‘Sunshine State’.

Shorter transit times on the Short North
The Newcastle line has always been a hard road to run, given the grades and curves, along with interference from suburban trains over a quarter of the distance, and train speeds have not been helped by the many track deviations introduced in the early 20th century to increase the load capacity of steam-hauled freight trains. Max Michell and Philip Laird take an expert look at how some of these changes may be reversed, for the benefit of modern-day passenger and freight traffic.

Running the ‘Westons’ Rake’
Aside from its intermodal and coal-haulage activities, Southern Shorthaul Railroad (SSR) operates wheat trains across all of NSW, predominantly using its impressive SSR Class locomotives. Rob Shaw takes us on board for a couple of typical runs, one to Narrabri North and another to Cootamundra West.