|
:''This article is part of the history of rail transport by country series Australians generally assumed in the 1850s that railways would be built by the private sector. Private companies built railways in the then colonies of Victoria, opened in 1854, and New South Wales, where the company was taken over by the government before completion in 1855, due to bankruptcy. South Australia's railways were government owned from the beginning, including a horse-drawn line opened in 1854 and a steam-powered line opened in 1856. In Victoria, the private railways were soon found not to be financially viable, and existing rail networks and their expansion was taken over by the colony. Government ownership also enabled railways to be built to promote development, even if not apparently viable in strictly financial terms. The railway systems spread from the colonial capitals, except in cases where geography dictated a choice of an alternate port. Railways in Australia date from the 10 December 1831 when the Australian Agricultural Company officially opened Australia's first railway, located at the intersection of Brown & Church Streets, Newcastle, New South Wales. Privately owned and operated to service the ''A Pit'' coal mine, it was a cast iron fishbelly rail on an inclined plane as a gravitational railway The colonial railways were built to three different gauges, which became a problem once lines of different systems met at Albury, New South Wales in 1881 and Wallangarra, Queensland in 1888. In the 20th century, the lines between major cities were converted to standard gauge and electrified suburban networks were built in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. In the second half of the 20th century, many rural branch lines were closed to passenger traffic or altogether in all states. On the other hand, long heavy-haul railways were built to transport iron ore in Western Australia and coal in Queensland to ports. In Western Australia these railways are privately owned. In the 1990s and the early 21st century, the traditional networks were reorganised and partially privatised. The interstate standard gauge network came largely under the control of the Australian Rail Track Corporation and private companies were allowed to operate on it for the first time. Some non-metropolitan intrastate networks became privately controlled and the operation of private freight and passenger trains commenced. Queensland Rail was left as the only government-owned operator of freight or rural passenger trains. The Melbourne suburban railways became the first urban rail system to be operated by private sector franchisees. ==Development of state-based networks== Railways in Australia date from the 10 December 1831 when the Australian Agricultural Company officially opened Australia's first railway,〔 located at the intersection of Brown & Church Streets, Newcastle, New South Wales. Privately owned and operated to service the ''A Pit'' coal mine, it was a cast-iron fishbelly rail on an inclined plane as a gravitational railway.〔 The earliest railway in South Australia consisted of the seven-mile horse-drawn freight line between Goolwa and Port Elliot in South Australia, which began service on 18 May 1854, allowing steam ships to avoid the treacherous mouth of the Murray River. The first steam locomotive began service soon afterward between Sandridge (now Port Melbourne), and Flinders Street, Melbourne.〔 In 1848, the Sydney Railway Company was established to connect Goulburn and Bathurst to Sydney, mainly to convey wool for export to the United Kingdom. It had considerable difficulty raising sufficient funds to commence construction and none of the proposed standard gauge () line was opened until 1855, when the line was opened between Sydney and Granville in what is now Sydney's western suburbs, the first section of what is now the Main Southern line. In fact, the ''Sydney Railway Company'' went bankrupt building it and as a result the line was taken over by the government, leading to the establishment of the New South Wales Government Railways. Part of the reason for the delay in starting construction and the Company's eventual bankruptcy was the start of the Australian gold rushes in 1851—these created a labour-shortage and forced up prices. In fact the railway did not reach Goulburn until 1869 and Bathurst until 1876, both lines having had to cross difficult topography.〔 Victoria was the main beneficiary of the gold rushes, with the major discoveries around the state but particularly at Ballarat and Bendigo (then called ''Sandhurst'') in the early 1850s. While this created a labor shortage in the colony (which had separated from New South Wales in 1851), it also caused great development in Melbourne, first settled in 1835 and declared a city in 1847. As a result, Australia's first steam-powered railway was a suburban line opened by the Melbourne and Hobson's Bay Railway Company from Melbourne to Sandridge (now Port Melbourne) in 1854. This line and almost all subsequent Victorian lines were built to broad gauge (, gauge). In 1856, the government-owned South Australian Railways opened its first gauge line from Adelaide to Port Adelaide.〔 The three major Australian colonies at the time failed to follow advice from the British Government to adopt a uniform gauge in case the lines of the various states should ever meet. In 1850 the original Irish engineer, Francis Sheilds persuaded the Parliament of New South Wales to require that all railways in the colony be of the Irish broad gauge. In 1853 a Scots engineer persuaded the legislature to change back to standard gauge. Unfortunately although New South Wales had informed Victoria of the change, the government there decided to continue with gauge and South Australia then followed Victoria. Suggestions and proposals respectively that Victoria should follow New South Wales or New South Wales should convert to the Victorian gauge were made soon after but the states followed their initial choice.(詳細はnarrow gauge") from Ipswich to Bigge's Camp, the first stage of a railway between Brisbane and Toowoomba, opened in 1865. This gauge was intended to save money and was subsequently followed by Tasmania and Western Australia. As a result, in the middle of the 20th century Australia had almost equal amounts of each gauge. Tasmania's first gauge line opened in 1871 from Deloraine to Launceston and was converted to gauge in 1888. Finally, Western Australia opened its first Government-owned line in 1879 between Geraldton and Northampton. Lines spread in all the states from these first lines, connecting ports to farmland and ports.〔 The mainline systems of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Queensland met (albeit with three breaks of gauge) in the 1880s. Only Victoria and South Australia shared a common gauge, and even so they opted to change engines at the border. The other mainland colony, Western Australia, was isolated by 2,000 km of desert. The first break of gauge was created when the New South Wales and Victorian lines met at Albury in 1883.〔 The railways of Victoria and South Australia meet at Serviceton in 1887, but these lines were both broad gauge.〔 In 1888 the railways of New South Wales and Queensland meet at Wallangara.〔 Meanwhile, in 1889, the first line ( gauge) in the Northern Territory was opened from Darwin to Pine Creek. In 1914, an eight kilometre extension of the New South Wales Railways from Queanbeyan to Canberra was opened to create the Australian Capital Territory's first and only line. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「History of rail transport in Australia」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|