Talk:Adelaide–Darwin railway line

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Confusing Railways[edit]

This article appears to misrepresent the significance of the Old CAR, the New CAR and the final Tarcoola to Darwin line.

I would like to split out the Old CAR from the Story, so that its history is clearly articulated, and separate from the later Tarcoola to Alice CAR and the final Tarcoola to Darwin Line.

Any comments? Sulzer55 (talk) 07:38, 22 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is a great idea - they're essentially different lines, so they should be delineated much clearer than they are here and at The Ghan. Rebecca (talk) 10:51, 22 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Totally agree. I have made wholesale changes to central australia railway and will start stripping some of the content

Skillsy (talk) April 2016 —Preceding undated comment added 14:08, 23 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

?[edit]

Title is Adelaide - Darwin (south to north) and the lead sentence has Adelaide–Darwin railway is a north–south - huh? SatuSuro 10:31, 9 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Single track ?[edit]

This needs to be explicitly mentioned, along with how trains pass each other if so. Also the article should discuss the degree of usage e.g. km/year compared to other lines... seems to be low usage if single track. Rcbutcher (talk) 15:53, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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Merger proposal -- AustralAsia Rail Corporation[edit]

I propose that AustralAsia Rail Corporation be merged into Adelaide-Darwin railway. The existing stub of the former is two paragraphs, the second of which is already on this page with better hyperlinking, and the former of which might contain some information worth adding to Adelaide–Darwin railway#Alice Springs to Darwin, but it's hard to tell because the only references on the page are to primary sources --- one is the company's site, the other is an article published by the CEO of the company that won the contact. Paul "TBBle" Hampson (talk) 17:24, 6 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose. Significant infrastructure operator which, as the article notes, isn't going anywhere any time soon. Needs expansion not deletion. The Drover's Wife (talk) 08:14, 7 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose.The railway line is the infrastructure, the Corporation is its (part) owner (the other part being owned by ARTC. It would be like saying that the page for Trans-Australian Railway should be one and the same as the Australian Rail Track Corporation. AARC should stand alone from the railway line itself on this basis. Agreed with DroversWife, AARC could be expanded (something I can help with when I get some spare moments!)James.au (talk) 10:25, 7 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Request for comment on terminologies[edit]

Please comment on some proposals potentially affecting this article, here. Cheers, SCHolar44 🇦🇺 💬  at 13:45, 13 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Provisions for access in lease[edit]

Hello Dormskirk, I noticed you deleted "The lease includes provisions for access by other rail operating companies" because it was unreferenced. I often do likewise, but in this case I would prefer to leave the text in place for a while. Reason: the provisions were an entirely new development in Australia for railway infrastructure, in which a company has responsibilities for the line but not exclusivity in its access. In essence it's too important an aspect to leave out. That said, a reference is needed. I'll ask one of my researcher colleagues at the National Railway Museum, Port Adelaide, to find details of the lease that can be referenced. In the meantime, would you object to my reverting the deletion for the time being? Cheers, Simon – SCHolar44 🇦🇺 💬 at 23:49, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 9 August 2022[edit]

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

result:
No consensus. One month and two relistings, yet there is no agreement seen below to rename this article. As is usual with no-consensus outcomes, editors can strengthen their arguments, discover new ones and try again in a few months to garner consensus for this page move. Thanks and kudos to editors for your input; good health to all! P.I. Ellsworth , ed. put'r there 06:04, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Adelaide–Darwin railway line → Tarcoola–Darwin railway line – The line to Darwin originates at Tarcoola; the link to Adelaide is run across separate railway lines. Owner/manager of the line Aurizon (and previously One Rail) refers to the line as running Tarcoola to Darwin as do official studies [1] [2] [3] and current media [4]. Going further back, the original ownership body AustralAsia Railway Corporation refers to the then-yet to be constructed line as "The railway will operate between Tarcoola, north-west of Adelaide, and Darwin in the Northern Territory, connecting to the Port of Darwin." – Nick Mitchell 98 talk 12:39, 9 August 2022 (UTC) — Relisting. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 16:48, 16 August 2022 (UTC) — Relisting. – robertsky (talk) 18:20, 23 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]


Your comments are valid, Nick. The detail in the article is really about Tarcoola–Darwin.
I see a problem, but with an easy solution. Renaming the article to Tarcoola–Darwin railway line would leave us without an over-arching article equivalent to these:
  • Sydney–Perth rail corridor
  • Sydney–Melbourne rail corridor
  • Sydney–Brisbane rail corridor
  • Melbourne–Adelaide rail corridor.
However, to remedy this a (very) short, high-altitude summary article on the whole Adelaide–Darwin rail corridor similar to these could be written quite easily; I could put it near the top of my To-Do list unless someone else wants to do it.
The "corridor" terminology is well established, not only in the above 4 articles but also in the railway industry: for example, the website of One Rail, when the company was owner-operator and lessee-operator of the Tarcoola–Darwin line (https://1rail.com.au/#services) referred to:
  • "... intermodal services on the Adelaide to Darwin corridor, servicing Alice Springs, Tennant Creek, Katherine & Darwin"
  • "the Adelaide-to-Darwin rail corridor".
One Rail also frequently used the term "Tarcoola-to-Darwin rail line", such as:
  • "We operate in South Australia, the Northern Territory, which includes the Tarcoola-to-Darwin rail line, ...".
I agree that "Adelaide–Darwin railway line" is problematic as an article title, especially because it ignores the three other component lines with their very different histories. But I also haven't often seen the term used.
Summing up:
  • I SUPPORT the proposal.
  • I suggest a very short article be written in due course to summarise the Adelaide–Darwin rail corridor to match the four articles above.
Cheers, Simon – SCHolar44 🇦🇺 💬 at 14:00, 9 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@SCHolar44: You might also want to review some of the other interstate rail articles. For example, the Trans-Australian Railway article claims that that railway runs between Kalgoorlie and Adelaide, when it has really only ever run between Kalgoorlie and Port Augusta, where it now connects with the Adelaide–Port Augusta railway line, or Port Pirie, to which it was extended in the 1930s. Bahnfrend (talk) 14:19, 9 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your comment, Bahnfrend. I fully agree. I am currently preparing a substantial upgrade to the Trans-Australian Railway article; that's one of the things I noticed. Last week I acquired some more material and I'm about to trawl through for references.  :-) The southerly components that you mention will also need to be addressed in the short Adelaide–Darwin "corridor" article to be written in due course. However, I don't have the background (or if I'm honest, the interest) to venture into Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. PS: Do you support/oppose Nick's proposal? Cheers, Simon – SCHolar44 🇦🇺 💬 at 01:45, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Wikipedia has a real issue with railway articles being written from the perspective of railfans instead of ordinary people. There are all of sixteen Google results for "Tarcoola-Darwin railway line", all of which relate to freight traffic. "Adelaide-Darwin rail corridor" has Google hits which almost entirely consist of Wikipedia mirrors. The line is, as far as the ordinary person is concerned, a railway from Adelaide to Darwin. The only significance of Tarcoola is that it is where the newer track on the line commences: you can't actually catch the train there, no service commences or terminates at Tarcoola, and the line operates alongside other lines south of there. This is distinct from Trans-Australian Railway, where most sources of all kinds refer to that term as describing the previously-missing link between Kalgoorlie and Port Augusta. The Drover's Wife (talk) 04:36, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per The Drover's Wife. XtraJovial (talk • contribs) 18:56, 10 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Support. I agree with SCHolar44 🇦🇺. This article is and/or should be about a railway line that started out in 1980 as a line between Tarcoola and Alice Springs replacing the Central Australia Railway, and is now a line between Tarcoola and Darwin. Adelaide is about 600 km (370 mi) from Tarcoola, and has never been a part of that line. More specifically, Adelaide is no more a part of that line than Perth is a part of the Trans-Australian Railway: even though Perth is linked with the latter line, the WA state capital is about 600 km (370 mi) from that line's western terminus, at Kalgoorlie railway station. As has been suggested by SCHolar44 🇦🇺, there should also be a separate article, "Adelaide–Darwin rail corridor", about a distinctly different topic, namely the rail corridor between those two cities. Such an article would tie in with the corresponding existing articles such as Sydney–Perth rail corridor. In specific response to The Drover's Wife, the Tarcoola to Darwin railway line is primarily a freight line. During the NT wet season, it has no passenger trains at all for months at a time. There is already a separate article, The Ghan, about another distinctly different topic, namely the passenger train that links Adelaide with Darwin only between February and November. The fact that trains, including freight trains, originate or terminate somewhere other than Tarcoola does not change the facts that the railway line itself (a) starts and terminates there, and (b) has a distinct history and identity; rather, those facts, combined with that distinctiveness, emphasise the appropriateness of a separate article about the "Adelaide–Darwin rail corridor", which includes part of the Trans-Australian Railway and also a third railway line, between Adelaide and Port Augusta, which should also have a separate and distinct article of its own. Bahnfrend (talk) 09:36, 12 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You have hit the dogspike on the head, precisely, Bahnfrend.
I've decided to write up the lines south of Port Augusta over the weekend and add that to heavily condensed coverage (1–2 paragraphs) of the Tarcoola–Darwin sector to consitute a more appropriate Adelaide–Darwin rail corridor article. Hopefully, that and some small tweaks to the Tarcoola–Darwin article will end up doing justice to both subjects. Cheers, Simon – SCHolar44 🇦🇺 💬 at 09:52, 12 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I expect to finish the extra material on the development of the southern part of the route in about 24 hours – I've had to cast wider than I expected for references because so little has been written about it. I think it will then be clearer for people to decide on the relative merits of changing/not changing the names of the entire route and the Tarcoola–Darwin bit. Cheers, Simon – SCHolar44 🇦🇺 💬 at 23:13, 16 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
See update below. SCHolar44 (talk) 01:40, 23 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support, there is no Adelaide-Darwin railway line per se, but one corridor that travels over a number of railway lines, namely the Adelaide-Port Augusta railway line, part of the Trans-Australian Railway and Tarcoola-Darwin railway line. Agree that this article should be renamed and rewritten to focus on the Tarcoola-Darwin line with an over-arching Adelaide-Darwin rail corridor article created along the lines of the four other rail corridor articles.
The argument for maintaining the status quo that just because you can't catch a train from Tarcoola is irrelevant. While plenty of lines branch off from junctions within or very close to towns with stations, plenty don't, branching off at locations in the middle of nowhere. Of note is that the book: Railway Routes 1854 - 2000 which is a bit of a bible when it comes to Australian railway line information, considers the Tarcoola-Darwin railway line to be a stand alone line. Valeinmose (talk) 04:00, 17 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Update on my offer to expand the Adelaide–Darwin article as above (16 August): Surprise, surprise! The reference material proved far more elusive than I thought. As of today, however, the article is 90% complete and I expect to receive the remaining reference source articles/books in the next few days so I can drop them in. The more comprehensive coverage of the early lines (1854–1937) that I've completed certainly rounds out the article, and I find the wider coverage reinforces the notion that the lines collectively are a corridor, not a line. That, and the factor of compatibility with the other four "corridor" articles, leads me to favour:

  • restoring the expanded article's name to "Adelaide--Darwin rail corridor"
  • editing the Tarcoola–Darwin content down (deleting the "First steps towards a transcontinental railway" section and delineating more the two separate (1980 + 2004) projects).

Will others agree when I have uploaded the expanded corridor article? We'll see. Any comments? Cheers, Simon – SCHolar44 🇦🇺 💬 at 01:40, 23 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose. Many who know that Adelaide and Darwin are connected by a railway line would have never heard of Tarcoola. So the current title is far more recognisable, and the article content should match it. Andrewa (talk) 16:10, 6 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Further update: My delay in expanding the article as promised has been on account of being in hospital for a short while. I am resuming the article, and the reference books and journals I needed are here. Just a few days now.  :-) SCHolar44 (talk) 00:03, 8 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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