That's pretty interesting to hear about the government owning the rail. Wasn't aware anyone did that. Depends on the fees for each but for the ones I'm aware of truck fees are negligible.

This article was talking about "across the country", the example being between Melbourne and Sydney.

Autonomous trains are a legitimate idea. Yes it gets a lot of attention from 'innovators' which make it sound like a scam, but it's legit idea. It has a lot of hurdles to get through. It solves some problems like not having to shunt and move individual cars around which can be a real problem. The economy of scale of one long train is a double edge sword, it introduces a lot of arrangement, assembly, moving individual cars around at the start and finish, and time (cost of inventory in transit is very real). Also it allows one crew (people are expensive) for many cars. I don't think there's a fundamental reason we can't do both on the same system. When you get down to it the benefit of rail is that steel on steel has lower rolling resistance, lower wear and tear, and cheaper infrastructure.