You live in the middle of nowhere.......

@Aussie Pom An American train company, CSX, ran a five mile train

How long in miles?

Aussie pom I I live near a CXS railroad tracks and those fast trains are every bit of 5 miles in length. There is usually 3 locomotives leading and at least 2 locomotive in the middle or 3 locomotives at the end. I see around 20 trains per day.

@@user-fm2ib8wz8b like i said five miles.

Yes...its was 7km

Actually I reckon it's deliberate to have tuneful horns. People won't get the hell out of the way if you play Vivaldi!- more dissonance = more attention, just like a baby crying to wake up its parents. Train crews don't want anyone lulled into sleep in front of them now do they - even out in the desert!

I have to admit, the scenery is a lot like Western Nebraska/Eastern Wyoming. LOL

Only Better.

The women out here are the dedicated people around. It takes a special kind of woman to put up with the Isolation and loneliness

"bolt down the mountain to Perth" We don't have mountains between Kalgoorlie and Perth Flat terrain

@@capitainebonhomme1609 Being that it was in 1967, I may have the wrong name for the the town where I changed trains.

@@capitainebonhomme1609 the old main eastern line had a single tunnel at Swan View, which would not have been necessary if there were no hills. This line was bypassed by the Avon Valley Deviation.

@@capitainebonhomme1609 The elevation of Kalgoorlie is 468 m, so at least there is a 468 m drop down to Perth although I’ve never heard of mountains being in there.

Actually it bends down - the Earth is not flat.

I don't think it the Big Chief. The Big Chief is primarily passenger train.

On the straight track these NR class of locomotives are capable of pulling 2500t @115km/h , it's a Dash-9(-40C) locomotives a good product of GE and they serve well over 20 years on MP trains which is a challenge each day

Passenger trains the carriages dont weight as much as a freight train wagons would..Trains like the Indian Pacific and The Ghan have aluminium carriages so are pretty light compared to steel wagons carrying double up containers.

I can tell you when they are leaving I watch them everyday loading a pain in the ass when you're trying to get across the track

When you cross it on the 'Indian Pacific' (or on a special train as I did years ago), it's actually quite interesting, because it's different to eucalypt forests, mountains or graingrowing areas. The crews often have the comfort of a converted crew car to retire to once their shift is over.

@@edmundcarew7235 I was a U. S. railroader, and I had the comfort of a hotel room after only about 200 miles of a run, not nearly 3,000! That is mind boggling. I believe the longest currently used straight stretch of mainline railroad in the U. S. is a little less than 80 miles.

@@paulw.woodring7304 Great, and well done! The crews typically work Port Augusta (in South Australia) to West Kalgoorlie in Western Australia, so they're not driving for anything near 3,000 miles. Plus in Oz like vast majority of rest of world everything's in metric, so kilometres.

P.A. To Kalgoorlie is 1800 km. (19 hours non-stop on the highway)

@@edmundcarew7235 SCT crews work Adelaide to Perth

@Martin Turner I also care about apostrophes! US English is bastardised English, so not acceptable. It's a good idea to use standardised UK English, the original and the best. Who wants a situation in language such as we have with three different major rail gauges in Australia?

Believe it or not, there is very much to see on the Nullabor Plain, but you need to get on the ground to see it. Especially the caves/grottos and underground water systems containing blind fish.

It takes thousands of passengers every year.

Yes that is correct.

There is such a video well two to be exact, not long ago SBS a tv station here in Australia did both The Ghan and The Indian Pacific from various viewpoints around the train.. Both documentaries had two versions of the film, there is a shortened one of about 3 hours long and an extended one that went for 17 hours..

They're Aus designed ones, we don't have the axel loading for the US ones with the shared truck between sections else they are overweight and heavily speed restricted. Most of the ones in this vid are permanently coupled pairs or sets of '5 packs' which are all essentially fully independent wagons but with a solid drawbar bolting them together

Modern locos today are ultra reliable and if serviced regularly are very reliable and rarely if ever, break down.

@@MS_Trains Thanks, I guessed it was something like that.

Standard hauge

YES

YES, on occasions whole batches of sheep are wiped out.

enough to over come drag no problem.

also in good old us of a 45 cars mixed load ringling bros bower and bailey circus they had 3 if not 4 units each one allocated a colour

trespire Australian steel mills produce 2.6 million tonnes of steel annually. There are about 100,000 people employed in the steel manufacturing industry, so yeah, there is local steel production. Of course they are better at making the steel than bending it, hence the long straight sections of railroad track ;)

@@artistjoh Thanks for the witty reply, good to know.

trespire :) People don’t realize that all the bending experts moved to Queensland for bending the bananas :)

@@artistjoh Please no banana jokes, it's Saturday have mercy.

trespire :)

Yes that is the crew quarters as there are two crews of two people, and they have a fuel wagon as there's not many places to get fuel along the section of track.

@@aussiefiriePlus it reduces costs for the rail operator, and the crew car makes for easy changeovers of the drivers.

also america not big enough for such trains

@@raypitts4880 well it is about the same size as Australia, so it is certainly big enough, but much more highly populated.

@@robman2095 their population is also more spread out than here

Sounds like you know all about Sydney...

@@simonchant761 Only from hearsay.

No, that's fuel. It's a system called Inline refuelling which can fuel the locomotives as the train moves along, keeping the locomotive's tanks completely full. SCT Logistics & Aurizon use it so they can go entirely from Adelaide to Perth or Darwin without the need for refuelling. Pacific National, however, don't use it and stop to refuel at Cook in the middle of the Nullarbor Plain. Matt - M&S Trains

@@MS_Trains Ahhhh thank you! That answers a question I've wondered for a long time! Cheers

It’s crew headquarter for rest

materials or expansion joints

In the "OLD days" with bolted joints, this issue was a major problem. But in the 21 Century with continual welded rail and concrete sleepers, built in contraction and expansion joints, such issue no longer pose a problem. BUT, during the summer months, train speeds are reduced when temperatures reach a designated point, otherwise the track may warp ahead of the train.

I researched this prior to riding the Indian Pacific (which did not happen due to Covid, they still have my $$). Seems they fairly recently installed full Centralised Train Control operated from Adelaide. Equipment at loops etc is powered by solar and interconnected by microwave communication as far as I know. Reliability would be a big concern, a failed $2 component would cost much more to replace let alone the disruption. Prior to that the driver could reverse the entry switch (points) to the loop via a local radio link (like a garage door opener) if need be and the points would automatically reset (there was a speed limit at loops which was an operational nuisance). If anyone has more accurate information that would be useful to know. Over the life of the line, more crossing loops have been installed and existing ones made longer (to accommodate 1.8km long trains I think). Presumably the situation will be reached over coming decades where the loops will be so long and plentiful that the line will effectively be double tracked. Some crossovers would presumably be retained to miniminise derailment and maintenance disruptions.

@@netking66 The achiles heal of the signaling system is lightening.

9iiiuuhgguuiijhguu>hgffyuoijgfio

Fair comment, but 'The Ghan' and 'Indian Pacific' mostly run once a week only in each direction. Many Amtrak trains are daily.

To be fair the Indian Pacific and The Ghan are more like a rolling cruise ship than an A to B train like Amtrak

Suspect the cars are heavier than some of the European loco hauled cars, and on a par with USA cars except perhaps the Amtrak double deck Superliners.

It helps the track is very very flat...

Thing is our passenger cars do not need the heating abilities of Euro or AMERICAN cars, Air con is far more important.

If there are no grades of any significance, you can get by with minimal power.

To the author of this comment, the FACT is, the line does terminate at Kalgoorlie. From Kalgoorlie onwards to Perth, trains travel on a railway called the Eastern Goldfields Railway to Northam and then the Eastern Railway through the Avon Valley. Check google, it will tell you the same thing. Matt - M&S Trains

The original TAA was Kalgoorlie to port Augusta standard guage built & run by the Commonwealth railway. Perth to Kalgoorlie was WA rail at 3 feet six and port Augusta to Adelaide was SA railways 5 feet 3 broad guage.

Yes the ghan

Hook and Pull, means the folks who own and operate the passenger consist, do not own the locos. They contract companies who posses locos to do the pulling for them. Thus the terminology, "HOOK and PULL".

A belated many thanks!

The beer dosnt get through

They alternate driving and resting with other crews on the trip out. They then do a turn around somewhere and then alternate back using the same approach. The regulations are strict and the Unions don't take any crap when it comes to hours and safety. It's a VERY well paid job but you are away from your family for 3-4 days at a time.

So they turn around and head back without resting up in a hotel? Just continue alternating there and back?

Ian Rozzano They stay in a hotel at the destination before the return trip. The crew coach is used on the trip as they rotate shifts. Im a driver, but I’m on the east coast just north of Sydney. We stay at hotels for the longer distance jobs but it’s only one night away luckily.

Matt B - Thanks for the info. I figured they must stay in a hotel at some point. Any idea what they get paid for a round trip? What about you? What does a round trip on your territory pay? How many kilometers is it? For me, I run 234 miles (376 kilometers) from Stockton CA to Bakersfield CA and get paid 504 USD (707 AUD) each way so a round trip gets me over 1000 USD. I’m curious if your union contracts get you similar pay. Also is it true you have CD players on your locomotives? I read that somewhere.

Ian Rozzano We don’t get paid per trip, we get paid an hourly rate. I’m paid $61.98 an hour including the various allowances. The lengths of the journeys at my depot generally vary between about 250-320km. At my previous depot, we ran up to 485km but that was intermodal working and my current depot is mostly coal. When going on an overnight job (we call them barracks jobs) we get untaxed meal allowance of about $30 for each 8hrs (or part thereof) away. That usually means about $120 on top of the normal pay. Also, if we are resting for more than 11hrs, we get paid 170% of the hourly rate until we sign on for the return trip. So a typical barracks job is usually worth about $1400-1500 before tax. Most of our work is local though so we normally just come in for about an 8-9 hour shift. Looks like our pays are very similar. The drivers that do the crew van working across the desert get heaps more in the way of allowances I believe.

thats what i thought to wide