The Tassie transport project

I always thought that the various railway commissions WERE the State Governments. With very few exceptions for smaller privately owned lines, most states were at one time or another fully controlled by the said governments.
Some parts of the SAR and the NT were federally controlled (ANR) up until the time that they started having fire sales and eventually handing them over to private enterprises.
There were some exceptions of course, the Hunter Valley coal lines, the Iron ore lines over the West just to mention a few.
Majority of the individual states lines would have been under government controls by the 20th century and even to this day, think you would find that the individual states would probably still own the actual trackage, even if the have sold all the rest off. Are exceptions of course, like up in the Pilbara. But I digress, and apologise, original thrust was to do with Tasmanian transport an TGR.
Rodders would be better qualified to explain that, he's the go-to man as far as rail is concerned.
Dave_64

Yes the railway here was called the TGR or Tasmanian Government Railway.

In the mid 20s a lot of regulation started to appear for road tspt here and by 1930 the Government had created what was called the Transport Committee to oversea it all ....this committee being headed by the commissioner of railways, but ran as a separate operation... You can kinda see where this was heading ...
Then by the beginning of the 40s a new, better Transport Commission was formed ... But along similar lines to the old Committee ... While the old Railway Commission became the Transport Commission's Railway Branch...

The Commission was hell bent on propping up its costly railway ... And it was going to be road transport that suffered the most ... Although the railway was to face a decline and road tspt be the major player in much later years.

This type of thing was pretty common Australia wide, there were good reasons for this, though those reasons would depend a lot on whether you owned road transport

Per head of capita Australia had more miles of railways than any other country in the world and these cost a fortune to build and that was fine as Australia had plenty of gold and the like so it made sense to invest in our infrastructure

A perfect plan but along came the motor car and what people thought was a fad turned into a problem especially when that joker Henry Ford started the production line

Pretty soon road transport was a problem as the money the government borrowed to build the railways had to be repayed

Paul

Remember reading a bit about railways back in the earlier days in the Riverina area of NSW.
There was quite a lot of clout held by large landholders in the areas involved, this of course well before road transport, rail was quicker than bullock drays.
Passenger services taken head on by coaching company's.
If you can get hold of the booklet about the rail to Holbrook, tells of interesting contrasts even then, government had a mandate that prohibited the coach company's encroaching on rail.
Yet, was a regular coach service as well as coach stops on Great Southern Road (later to become the Hume Highway) between Holbrook and Albury.
Good historical read for anyone interested in early transport.
Was an old coaching house in Holbrook up until a few years ago, think it was turned into a museum.
Apologies to Werkhorse if we have hijacked his topic, but possibly may even be worth a segment of it's own???
Dave_64

Off topic I know, but in Dave's post he refers to the coach companies in competition with the rail, it was exactly this which created the opportunity for Reg Ansett to start an airline when he was banned from competing with the railways.

When he was stopped, legend has it he told the government at the time, "O'k then, I'll go over your head."

All good with me Dave .... There are a few guys I'm working with on the rego plate stuff that are interested in doing some sort of book on rego/regulations around the country ... So I'm soaking it all in

There's a copy of the book on Ebay.

It's priced in Pounds Sterling so assume it's in the UK.

In the late 1960s in Qld,trucks were limited to 40 miles from depot ,or to the nearest railway station without a permit from the railways.....There must have been an exemption for farmers,although I recall my uncle complaining about the time the railways took to get his beans to market at Roma Street..

John

Here is the 1960 Qld Regulation (I believe mirrored other states). There are many loads such as produce that needed no permits. Although the obvious intent was to protect the railways, the railways did not have anything to do with issuing goods licences which came from the Transport Department along with registrations and driving licences.

digitalcollections.qut.edu.au/3411/1/qsr...ulations_14apr62.pdf