Blockade 1979 Razorback

QR don't cart any grain at all any more, since they've decided to start digging up prime farming land on the Darling Downs, QR have allocated all there bulk bins to coal, all the grain goes by truck.

In a good year we can get 10,000,000-12,000,000 tonnes of wheat out of the W.A. wheatbelt. That's a lot of grain to put on the highways. At present, probably about three-quarters of it, is railed to the ports at Kwinana, Geraldton and Albany.

some bloke or blokes started some private freight rail service in Victoria a few years ago.... trains were green and gold I think... dont know what happened to them

but IDSBC as he says...

/me

If you want to have a really good rail system you need to let the truck drivers run it, they are the professionals in freight Train engine

I always had this crazy idea, kind of like the old fellas used to do it in the 70;s...
Why not have a drive on drive off train system- Bloke drops his trailer off at the train, the same as they do for the Tasmania ferry. Shuttle prime mover drives on, drives along the train, drops the trailer off. Train goes to Perth or Darwin, another tug pulls trailer off train, local company picks up the trailer and delivers procuce. Or whatever. Sounds really simple to me, and everyone gets a prize. The environment, trains, trucks, everyone wins. Why too complicated I wonder? Then again I guess it's taken damn near a hundred years to even begin to get a national standard rail gauge, so I guess expecting ANY sort of common sense out of self interested governments and companies is asking too much hey...

So I've had another idea, here it is!! Kind of "if Mahommed won't come to the mountain, then the mountain must come to Mahommed.." sort of..


And seems we are getting a bit modern today and all, and we are now using bigger trains, well, here we go!

Pro, they've already got that mate. They call it Intermodal, usually use container flats or containers but.