160
Sleeper trains are making a comeback. Why are ours being axed?
(www.smh.com.au)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
160 points (99.4% liked)
Australia
3620 readers
162 users here now
A place to discuss Australia and important Australian issues.
Before you post:
If you're posting anything related to:
- The Environment, post it to Aussie Environment
- Politics, post it to Australian Politics
- World News/Events, post it to World News
- A question to Australians (from outside) post it to Ask an Australian
If you're posting Australian News (not opinion or discussion pieces) post it to Australian News
Rules
This community is run under the rules of aussie.zone. In addition to those rules:
- When posting news articles use the source headline and place your commentary in a separate comment
Banner Photo
Congratulations to @Tau@aussie.zone who had the most upvoted submission to our banner photo competition
Recommended and Related Communities
Be sure to check out and subscribe to our related communities on aussie.zone:
- Australian News
- World News (from an Australian Perspective)
- Australian Politics
- Aussie Environment
- Ask an Australian
- AusFinance
- Pictures
- AusLegal
- Aussie Frugal Living
- Cars (Australia)
- Coffee
- Chat
- Aussie Zone Meta
- bapcsalesaustralia
- Food Australia
- Aussie Memes
Plus other communities for sport and major cities.
https://aussie.zone/communities
Moderation
Since Kbin doesn't show Lemmy Moderators, I'll list them here. Also note that Kbin does not distinguish moderator comments.
Additionally, we have our instance admins: @lodion@aussie.zone and @Nath@aussie.zone
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
The old SEx/MEx sleeper service was better than the XPT ever was. You had the full deluxe cabins if you wanted it with families, a proper dining car, and the slower travel time actually made more sense for overnight.
The problem with the XPT is that it's always been a weird middle ground. It's not a high speed train or anything close, it's just a bit faster, and the road these days is in a state where it's a reasonably ok one day drive if you've reason not to fly.
The train itself isn't really the slow part for the XPT, it's supposed to be able to run up to 160km/h. Knowing that only made it more annoying though when sitting in one chugging along at ~80k (or even slower when hot) up and down the north coast line - like most of our lines that track just wasn't good enough for it to go faster.
Also, the Melbourne-Sydney and Sydney-Brisbane lines are slow. They were built for feeble Victorian-era steam traction, and wind around hills to avoid gradients. Straighten some of the curves out, and you’d shave a few hours off the journey.
Not enough to justify scrapping sleeper trains, though: it’d still take a good 8+ hours to do Melbourne-Sydney. Though a hypothetical high-speed rail line could do the journey in 3 hours, and while it would take several generations to realistically build one in Australia, one could incrementally upgrade the existing lines, picking off the low-hanging fruit of slow curves and then replacing entire segments with high-speed ones and running classic-compatible trains along the network.
@AllNewTypeFace @Tau A similar problem with US northeast corridor rail: old track design, curves, lack of funding or availability of right of way to build modern infrastructure with gentle curves supporting higher speeds. Geography combined with buildings and 100 year old development that can’t be easily changed.
nah, if it was on the agenda ot would happen. the US doesn't have any problem displacing poor people and spending trillions. this type of project would hurt auto and air travel too much to be really considered
@lntl Considering how big corporations (including airlines) lobby in Washington…true. Amtrak can’t get any adequate funding, compare that to the FAA budget that provides air traffic control services in the US (as shaky as that is even).
Australia has it easier, as most of the land is rural or undeveloped. But then again, it’s Australia, a country where the unofficial national motto is “she’ll be right mate”. We don’t really do long-term planning there.