I just love rail vs road freight. Mr Tokimura needs to get a volumetric load of radio base stations to Emerald from his base in Melbourne...lets look at the rail. Taughtliner arrives at the Tokimura loading dock...if Mr Tokimura is lucky it is already a road railer so just load up the truck and send it down to the goods yard. Trailer is set up on boggies and set on the track awaiting shunting to build the train for Sydney. The train is loaded up with 150+ carriages and is good to go that night. arrives Sydney the next morning mid AM. Train broken up and Mr Tokimura's load is then re-shunted on to the Brisvegas train, leaves that night and gets into Brisvegas mid the next morning...thats three days since Mr Tokimura sent his load...next the load is put on to the Rocky train and leaves that night. At Rocky to save the situation of reloading from standard guage to narrow, a truck is put under the tautliner and the load is delivered the next day to the destination more than five days after taking the consignment. Contractor opens up the load and finds the electronics are shot...nobody took into consideration the heavy G shocks from shunting....as opposed to...Mr Tokimura has a consignment for Emerald. A Tautliner shows up at the Melbourne dock on Monday morning. All load and the truck is away. Next morning mid AM the truck arrives in Emerald. All electronics check out OK, load is on airbag and is only handled once...(Story is true, just the names changed to protect the innocent)
This is what rail has to compete with. Even with the north south freight corridor there is still the issue of getting the goods on to the train and then shunted off and road freighted to destination. Trains kill trucks on bulk freight grain coal and ore. Anything else? the train is just too damn slow. Even the grain needs a truck to get from the farm to the land port with maybe a couple of silo transfers before it is loaded on to the train.
Freight??? Unless the subsidy is pretty steep trains cannot ever compete. Rail needs government to put impediments like hours and weights to even up the playing field. Current crop of the NTA have made the most economical piece of equipment currently working the highway..b-doubles..horrendously expensive to register as compared to single deck semi-trailers.
Rail is a union oriented pipe dream and forever will be. The reason road gets more money than rail??? Mum and Dad can use the road to travel for work or play as well as the truck...can not see that happening soon on rail...roads are revenue multipliers..rail will never get there for freight alone.
ANNNNND, just to add. if that deal is so good, The old ANL would still be running roll-on roll-off freight from the major ports....another union pipe dream.