Portal:Trains/Selected article/Week 16, 2007

The history of rail transport in Australia dates almost to the decade of the first commercial railways in the world. Following the British model, Australians generally assumed in the 1850s that railways would be built by the private sector. Private companies attempted to build railways in the colonies (states after Federation in 1901) of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. The first line opened in South Australia in 1854 as a horse-drawn line, while the first steam-powered line opened in Victoria a little later in 1854. It was soon established that the private railways were not financially viable, and the building of rail networks was taken over by colonial governments. This also enabled railways to be developed to promote development, even if not apparently viable in strictly financial terms. The railway systems spread from the colonial capitals, except in cases where geography dictated a choice of an alternate port. The colonial railways were built to three different gauges, which became a problem once lines of different systems met at Albury, New South Wales, in 1881 and Wallangarra, Queensland, in 1888. In the 20th century, the lines between major cities were converted to standard gauge and electrified suburban networks were built in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. In the second half of the 20th century, many rural branch lines were closed to passengers or altogether in all states. On the other hand, long heavy-haul railways were built to transport iron ore in Western Australia and coal in Queensland to ports.