Rail transport in New South Wales

The railway in New South Wales comprises the largest rail network in Australia. She had a high proportion of the development of the state. The majority of the routes was built to standard gauge and the state.

• 2.1 Network development in NSW
• 2.2 Public transport in the Sydney metropolitan area

Gauge

Since prior to the merger of the Australian colonies to the state in 1901 they were legally independent of each other, was the ruling on the gauge, in which the respective railway should be built affair of the individual colony. It was originally intended by the Act of July 27, 1852, the railway network in New South Wales in a broad gauge of 1,600 mm to build (5 feet 3 inches ). This was abandoned shortly after in favor of standard gauge, as the mother country, Great Britain, spoke out for his own net for it. This was taken.

Redfern Parramatta

The construction of the first line of Redfern ( Sydney ) to Parramatta from 1850 onwards, for on 10 October 1849, the Sydney Railway Company was established, proved difficult: Workers in the colony were hard to get and so expensive, the original estimate of costs were far exceeded and the project manager resigned. Of the originally planned timber bridges and wooden rails (!) Has now taken distance and built in 1854 at the same time at a terminal of Darling Harbour. The resulting financial chaos was thus collected, that the colony took over the project in state ownership. The first locomotives delivered Robert Stephenson & Co. of England. As of September 26, 1855 the operation of this 22 km long railway track was recorded.

Newcastle

From 1853 onwards a number of both public and private railway lines that served the transportation of coal mined there arose in Greater Newcastle, independently from its beginnings in Sydney Area,. Thus, the fuel for the locomotives already on site was available, which promoted the development of the railway network. The networks of Sydney and Newcastle did have to wait until 1889 for a rail link, since the crossing of the wide Hawkesbury River was very expensive.

Network development

Network development in NSW

The chief engineer John Whitton then the creation of a rail network for the colony was monitored from 1857. Goulburn in the south-west of Sydney, Murrurundi in the north and Bathurst in the west have been achieved. For the latter, the Blue Mountains had to be exceeded, each extremely complex engineering structures required on both sides of the mountains, each a series of switchbacks. They were built in 1867 and 1869 and 1910 replaced by deeper tunnel. The western hairpin is a museum as a Zig Zag Railway. A report produced for the UNESCO report was considered to enter this technical cultural monument in the list of World Heritage of Humanity. 1883 in Albury, the border and the connection was achieved for the network of the colony of Victoria. Due to the different track gauges to drive through the trains was initially not possible. Passengers had to change trains, goods are transhipped. 1886 Bourke has been reached. The route, which zuführte to the place at that time was the longest straight section of railway line world, in this record until superseded by the 478 km long railway Especially the Trans Australian Railway, which started operating in 1917. 1906 Sydney Central Railway Station was put into operation. The station is equipped with 27 platform tracks ( 25 of which are operated ) still the largest in Australia. In 1927, the extreme west of the state and at the same time over a 30 km long narrow gauge private railway, which reached Silverton Tramway, the connection to the railway from South Australia to Broken Hill. This, however, was built here in narrow gauge, allowing travelers to change trains here and had to be transhipped goods. At the same time, this was also an important future segment of today's Trans Australian Railway. Was mitbetrieben From the Railroad of New South Wales since the opening in 1914, however, the 8 km short Australian Capital Territory Canberra Railway, whose infrastructure is owned by the Commonwealth of Australia.

The standard gauge network of New South Wales to the north reached 1888, the Queensland border, where had to be switched, as the local railway had been built in Cape gauge. The used today, shorter and standard gauge track has been around since 1932. Since 1962 it is possible to continuously drive through with the help of an in Victoria three-rail track on standard gauge also from the grid of New South Wales up to Melbourne. The line was almost 50 years later completely rebuilt to standard gauge. Since 1970 it is possible to drive through the network in New South Wales to Perth in Western Australia to standard gauge.

Public transport in the Sydney metropolitan area

From 1926 Sydney received an electrified suburban railway network, which also assumes the functions of a subway in the city center. Today it is operated by the railway company CityRail. In recent years, increasingly placed value on the expansion of the network of the ever-growing metropolitan area. Recent new buildings were the Airport and East Hills railway line (opened in 2000) and the link between Epping and Chatswood Rail Link in 2009.

Modern

After the Second World War, the steam locomotives were increasingly replaced by diesel locomotives used in passenger railcar and air-conditioned trains. From the 1960s the importance of the railroad declined in New South Wales as a means of transport. This meant that many branch lines were abandoned. A strong position has the web but in the transcontinental freight sector, especially in container trains and urban transport of the metropolitan Sydney. Long-distance passenger transport plays only a minor role.

In the first hundred years the power of the state railway grew from 22 km to 9387 km. Since then it has declined somewhat. The name of the state-owned railway company currently reads: Rail Corporation New South Wales, after the name was changed from time to time in the course of history ( New South Wales Railways, New South Wales Government Railways ). Freight transport is, however, outsourced and operated by Pacific National.