Blood, Iron & Gold by Christian Wolmar

Author:Christian Wolmar [Wolmar, Christian]
Language: zh
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books
Published: 2010-07-31T23:00:00+00:00

Australia, too, would eventually boast a transcontinental railway and, amazingly, its north–south line, the Ghan, named after the Afghan camel trains which used to trek along the same route, was only completed in 2004 (see Chapter 13). The transcontinental east–west connection across Australia was, like in Canada, a bribe for a far-off province to join the club. The railway linking Perth across hundreds of miles of empty desert with Port Augusta in South Australia and thence the rest of the country (though, of course, with different gauges) was one of the inducements offered to Western Australia to join the Commonwealth of Australia which the five other states established in 1901. It took ten years to sort out the survey and the legislation was eventually passed in December 1911. It authorized the construction of a line between the two existing railheads, Kalgoorlie, which had been reached by a 400-mile narrow gauge government railway in 1896 from Perth and Port Augusta, the South Australian railhead. It was an enterprise that may not have been on the scale of the other transcontinental railways as it was only 1,050 miles long but was nevertheless remarkable, not least because it was undertaken quickly at a time when the world was at war which created severe supply difficulties. Admittedly the terrain was flat, with a huge plateau covering over half the distance, allowing the line to include the longest stretch of straight railway anywhere in the world, a distance of 297 miles. 39 However, the climate was harsh, with temperatures at times topping 50°C and, crucially, not a single water course was crossed. The arid conditions not only presented enormous difficulties during construction, but, once the line was open, the steam-hauled trains had to carry water equivalent to half their load, making operations inefficient and expensive. Work started in September 1912 from both ends and was completed five years later. Although the adjoining railways at either end were narrow gauge, the line was built to standard gauge, forcing through travellers to change trains. Worse, passengers had to change trains again at Terowie, 136 miles north of Adelaide, because the line connecting with the state capital uses broad gauge (5ft 3ins) as a result of South Australia having built railways in three gauges. 40 It was only in 1970 that Australia’s intercity route was finally converted to standard gauge.

While these transcontinental railways were the biggest projects of their day, the period in which they were being built, particularly the last quarter of the nineteenth century, was the heyday of railway construction in most countries. Virtually every country in the world with the exception of a few African colonies and even including some small islands, had a railway by the beginning of the twentieth century, built for a variety of reasons and purposes.

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