Re the disused rail tunnels, there is a booklet on these that I found at an op shop and passed on to a loco driving acquaintance. I think it came through Thirlmere Rail Museum. It describes the diabolical conditions steam loco crews operated in, especially going north in the tunnel that ran from the southern end of present main road through Stanwell Park, part of Lawrence Hargreave Drive, which was once the rail right of way.

This tunnel came out at Otford and was about 1:40 in grade which is about the limit for steam locos. If there was a strong southerly blowing the engine's exhaust would follow it up the tunnel just about asphixiating the crew. Special ventilation was devised until the tunnel was replace by the present line.

This tunnel's steep grade and poor crew conditions forced trains to be divided at Thirroul and rejoined at Waterfall.

I did hear at the time we did the hikes that trains sometimes stalled in the big tunnel and required separation or shunting from the rear to assist it. We still do build trains like that sometimes.

When the Xplorer trains first hit the rails about 25 years ago, they lacked top-end power and on a stinking hot day one had to be pushed by a V-set to get it up a grade near the Hawkesbury Bridge on the main north line. Each Xplorer received a software upgrade to boost power and the job was done. At the end of the day, these, along with their Endeavour 'sisters', are just glorified rail motors and they are expected to do the same job as the bigger and better XPT trains.

Rio Tinto's iron ore trains in the Pilbera region in WA are two or three times as long..

Australia's international 'Balance of Payments' just achieved a remarkable surplus. Excellent. Cue cheerleading politicians..
...but Aust 'Net-International-Investment-Position' - NIIP - stays unhealthy. Why the paradox? Where's the money going?
One clue might be this: (hidden in wiki.)
"Owner [of Rio Tinto] : Aluminum Corporation of China Limited (0.131), BlackRock (0.0838) "

It is interesting to actually see what is doing what in trains. There is footage of four EDM's (most of ours are, or a modified form) on a Victorian grain line that were borrowed back from a museum and they were struggling. The trainset on the Melbourne - Albury disaster are I believe well over 30.

I think most of the Locos in the Pilbara are now US ones with more cooling. They sound like GE's (screaming turbo's). From memory that rail is uphill to the mines & downhill to the coast, so that saves a lot of HP.

Russia & China tend to have some of the highest HP Locos. These are electric https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2ES10 this is a Russian one and there are bigger. This is what you can achieve when its all electric motor instead of a gen set.

The story about Russian locomotives reminds me about all the electric locomotives we had here in NSW prior to privatisation of the freight rail services. Amongst the other uncompetitive disasters such as getting rid of the ability of people to send parcels by rail instead of having to lug them to a post office or use a courier (note: the railways didn't mind how big or awkward they were, as long as you paid, it got took!) all the 46 and 86-class electric locomotives were retired almost from day one under private ownership.

The usual trick was that the electrics would be used as far as they could run and then they'd be swapped out for diesels and vice versa and this even happened on passenger trains that still got tugged with traditional locomotives, except the Indian Pacific, as it was owned by the Commonwealth Government and they had their own locomotives.

The locomotives at the big mines are indeed of GE origin. They used to be built here under licence but whether that is still the case or not I am not sure. Australia once had numerous rolling stock manufacturers: NSW Government Railways (Redfern - yep, governments did build things themselves back then), Clyde Engineering (Clyde), Commonwealth Engineering (Granville), A Goninan & Co. (Newcastle), Tullochs (Rhodes), Walsh Island Dockyard (Newcastle) and these were just the ones that had operations in NSW. Some have been bought out and others have folded.

As I have noted many times: I have come to the conclusion (and there's plenty of evidence across the board to support it) that the Australian bureaucratic psyche everywhere has reached a consistent stupidity level where anything that does or even has an inkling of working is swept under the carpet, got rid of, including sold off overseas: In favour of finding something that does not work anywhere, has never worked anywhere in the world, or has every chance of failing, it is an absolute obsessive must have.

The Romans used the bio poison Lead to cause them to go mad & destroy the empire. I am sure we are using excesses of Fluoride to do the same thing. If you wonder at all of the Cancer etc that's happening; Look no further then its MSDS. It actually says it causes stupidity

Then: Its a self fulfilling prophesy: The bureaucrats sucking on the water would be to stupid to notice: because of it and it does not work, as its dangerous.

"They sound like GE's (screaming turbo's)"

Funny enough GE made some actual Gas-Turbine locomotives in the 1950s-1960s
Advantages: way fewer moving parts, and they could burn the worst grades of Bunker Oil.

Most of the iron ore rail systems in the Pilbara are pretty much a downhill grade so once the thing gets moving the locos are there to provide the very necessary braking energy back along the wagon string.

Remember the BHP train that ran away from its ONLY crew member when he stopped to check a hot box and the thing took off rolling down the slope gathering speed WITHOUT the driver on board.
Train control centre made the decision to derail it before it possibly smashed its way into the port unloading area as it really picked up speed and showed no signs of slowing.

The length of the ore lines AND the issue of lightning strikes on overhead lines up there more or less precludes using anything but diesel electric locos.

The long since gone 2 tube Telecom Coax cable Hedland to Newman was having issues with nasty lightning strikes and the Telecom Research Labs setup Lightning Counters at one of our repeater sites (Redmont) counting the number of strikes and the current discharges. During a thunderstorm the counters would be clattering away furiously and some recording lightning pulses of in excess of 60,000 amps would be banging away...rather scary stuff when it was happening.

Most nights over summer there would be a storm so the figures we sent back to the Research Labs more than raised eyebrows.

That coax cable as buried 1200 mm underground and the lightning at times used to blow the merry hell out of that cable if ground strikes were close by.

This place is riddled with MOV's due to lightning. It has hit trees, split trees taken chunks out of HV aerials, blown 144 fuses in the RAX and at the same time took a 20A contact off of a contactor. I have seen the radio and the HV power aerials trail St Elmo's Fire here. They put the phone line to this house underground (600m) from aerials & that resulted in the quick loss of five phones.

In the time the family has owned this place (147years) there has been one death and one fireball which went in the front door & out the back door & went another half a mile before hitting a tree & splitting it in half long ways.

Many stories about that stuff.

Old railway tunnels is one thing we have plenty of.

At Glenbrook there once existed the Lapstone zigzag. The railway came uphill from Penrith, to a point almost at the top of the uphill climb of the Great Western Highway, near the sharp corner. Then the railway zagged to the now-abandoned Lucasville station, then zigged again past the bottom of Knapsack St, past the fenceline of existing properties, then onto what is now the Great Western Highway. Glenfield station was approximately where the information centre is now. Some of this now exists as a walk through cuttings, and the abandoned station platform still exists. The walk and platform is clearly marked on Google maps.

This zigzag placed a great constraint on the length of trains, so a new route was constructed, and this included a tunnel under the highway. It's marked on the maps as Tunnel Gully. The eastern portal is inaccessible, because not only is the entrance blocked off, but the approach has turned into a quicksand-like mire. However the western portal has recently been cleared up, and approachable, but the tunnel itself is locked up. It used to be a mushroom farm. Before that, the military use to store poisonous gasses in there. The entrance is near the local sewer processing plant.

This tunnel not only was single track, but had no ventilation and was treacherous with water seepage. So eventually the current double-track route was made along the Glenbrook Gorge. This also required a new station.

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I have not visited the old Helenburgh station, but it is something I intend to do. I did visit the old Otford tunnel at the southern end though, Its position is not quite correct on Google, the tunnel is actually at the end of a fire trail off Chellow Dene Ave. The fire trail was the old railway, which then traversed all of Chellow Dene Ave, then onto Lawrence Hargrave Drive. Stanwell Park station was originally where the shops and so on are today (there's a Station St and a Railway Cres there). The railway then proceeded further down Lawrence Hargrave Drive before joining with the current railway toward Coalcliff.

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It would be interesting to see the abandoned tunnels under the Sydney CBD, but I don't think I'll ever manage to do that. When the Eastern Suburbs line was newly-opened, you could walk down the stairs at Central to the new platforms. Halfway down, there was an unlocked door, giving access to 2 more unused platforms. Unfortunately the fun police had those doors locked soon after.

Brad, I worked for the freight railway at the time it became privatised, and I can tell you why the electric locomotives were gotten rid of.

This was about the time the track authority was formed, and every private operator had to pay for track access (and still does). The price of the electricity for electric locos was far in excess of expected, making them uneconomical. So, all those locos were scrapped or otherwise disposed of. This is why the freight companies all use diesel locomotives.

The electric locos had other problems though. The 46 class were old, were becoming unreliable and had asbestos problems. The 86 class had bogie cracking problems, particularly 8650 I think it was, that had the unique 3-bogie setup. I'm not sure about the 85-class, but there were only 10 of them and they lacked the technology of the 86-class. Most of the 86-class were sent to disused sidings at Broken Hill and were extensively vandalised. I have photos if you're interested. It's enough to make train lovers cry.

Brad, the story of the railway parcel service was a saga in itself. It was called Trackfast, and was the biggest parcel delivery service in NSW. The reason for this was the incredibly cheap rates charged. The service ran at a loss, but the NSW Govt provided a benefit to keep it going. They did this because charities used the service for almost free.

However, governments being what they are, decided to no longer pay for the shortfall. By this time freight had been privatised, so the now loss-making Trackfast was shut down, and that was the end of that.

Well rail is making a comeback here in WA with the current Labor Govt and their MetroNet project. Currently there are 2 tunnel boring machines munching their way northwest from the airport and getting close to if not UNDER the Swan River and set to exit and join the Perth Midland line a km or so east of Bayswater station.

The original contract was awarded in April 2016 by the then Liberal Govt to start from Forrestfield and go underground UNDER the Perth airport with a station at terminal T1 (Virgin & International Terminals) and then continue on under the runways to Redcliffe as an U/G Station and head on towards the river to Bayswater.
The machines set out a couple of years ago almost side by side boring 2 parallel tunnels. Been a few engineering challenges with water leakage in and some surface subsidence whilst under the airport land and interestingly much of what is being dug out is stockpiled and sorted and being re-used for roadworks going on in Perth.

Railcar manufacturing is about to restart at Bellevue in a new facility not far from the old Midland Railway Workshops which were closed years ago and are being redeveloped into office and residential space.

A contract to build 246 new Metronet railcars was signed with Alstom with 50% WA content being built at the Bellevue site to supply the cars over a 10 year period and then maintain them at the facility for the next 30 years. The contract worth just under $1.6 Billion makes it cheaper to build in WA rather than have them built in Queensland and shipped over.
In the past each car cost $4 Million from Qld as compared to estimated cost built in WA at $3 Million.

The new Bellevue facility is 180M in length on disused railway land with another contract being let to build a High Voltage testing facility adjacent.
First rail cars are expected to be ready to go onto the network by 2022.

MetroNet web site is: https://www.metronet.wa.gov.au/

I remember the Trackfast name. It was one of the things that Nick Greiner (the bloke who wanted people to call him the State Manager instead of State Premier) got rid of, along with the parcel trains (two red rattler cars coupled together) that used to run around the Sydney rail network.