Sorry for the slight thread drift however during the recent fires I began to wonder whether regional railway freight/grain lines (those that are still maintained
) might be a potential means by which water and fire fighting assets could be deployed. Seems to me that a few thousand tons of water tanker cars could be mobile fairly smartly from a central location - maybe even more capacity than that could be moved. Fallen trees aside (cow catchers??), railway lines would seem to be fairly robust with regard to fire attack. A purpose built fire fighting train may be another arrow in the quiver given the extent of regional lines and could provide a central re-filling point for mobile ground based and aerial fire fighting assets. Just a thought.