JFAus: The river or catchment I was referring to as an example is the Thomson Creek catchment that runs into the Diamantina River and to Lake Eyre.

I think you'd be hard pressed to do anything with that waterway. When it's not flooded It's a dry as a bone. The Reservoir would have to be out at Diamantina Lakes in South Australia. Those Rivers only run every 5 or 6 years then nothing. Even North of the T'ville to Mt.Isa line to the Gulf there is nowhere to Reservoir the Water, it's a flat as a tack. I suppose you could dam some Gorges in the Gregory Ranges but getting there & getting the water out would be a Master Problem.

Putting the top on the Burdekin Dam would be a good start. It already holds 16 times more water than Sydney Harbour. With the top on it supposed to triple that amount. That was the idea of the Hydro Scheme but they filled in the Machinery Rooms with Concrete a few years ago. Still, even that future water is spoken for by the land between Home Hill & Bowen. All the Navy Beans for making Baked Beans comes from the Burdekin. As do Watermelons, Sweet Corn, Beans, Rock Melons, Honey Dew & a few others as well as the Sugar up as far as Delbeg.

JF Aus,

If we want to save our country's steel industry, we should invest very heavily in molten oxide electrolysis research, not select steel for jobs it's not cost effective in.

High speed rail has very different requirements to water pipelines. It can't manage tight curves and it needs to go where the passengers want to, whereas water pipelines can curve as tightly as roads but have to start from a dam or pumping station. No doubt some time in the future we will need more pipelines in some parts of Australia, but you seem to be treating it as a solution looking for a problem and not caring how bad suited it is to the one you've found.

I agree we should be very wary of diverting rivers to and from the Lake Eyre basin, as it may adversely affect some fish species there.

What makes you think the Greenies ignore ocean ecosystems? They've been concerned about overfishing far longer than the general population. And it's rare for lack of adequate nutrition to be the limiting factor, though it can happen when the sea creatures eat plastic.

"Many key rivers and lakes are being used as sewers, especially in Europe."
You seem to be living in the '70s! They've spent many billions cleaning up their lakes and rivers since then.

"Genuine greenies might encourage sensible water harvesting to manage life-saving water supply."
They do, but they might be a lot more cautious than you when determining what's sensible.

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Rhosty,

An evacuated system would be orders of magnitude more expensive and would present great technical challenges (for instance, how would they cool the trains down?)

It certainly wouldn't be economic for bulk freight, or even the freight that currently goes by road. And there's not much shunting of freight on Australian railways nowadays - it's mostly trainload from terminal to terminal.

JF, Thanks mate, suggest you take a bopeep at www.gizmag.com for the latest relevent info.

Aidan, what makes you think there'd be any heat generated by a completely frictionless system.



Over the lifetime of a fast ferry a nuclear powered variant that only needs to be fueled once every 25 years, is going to be cheaper to run than any diesel powered variant.

What do you think diesel is going to cost 20 years from now? Moreover given relevant sizes, nuclear powered aircraft carriers and subs have reportedly been able to nudge 40-50 knots!?

They'd likely outperform any of the diesel powered variants, and given modern and vastly safer pebble reactors could conceivably be mass produced as relatively small modules and then trucked to where they are needed, vastly cheaper than the old and more expensive variant you are thinking about or have links to Aidan!

Conventional trains and that is not what my mind is, unlike yours Aidan, not locked onto, have rotating bogies on turntables at both ends and given a reasonably straight track, are able to turn without needing to be articulated!

However given I'm in favor of a VLT and built from the ground up and operating inside its own purpose created carriageway, it can be as wide, tall and as long as we want.

And for passengers primarily not bulk freight which would need a very different system. Which instead of stopping at every whistle stop, would simply release a wagon or two and at speed, from the tail a couple of klicks ahead of the exit line, and use gravity and switching to move them to the unloading platform, to effectively outperform trucking every which way?

Otherwise whole trains could be loaded as entire double decker container trains on the aforementioned fast ferries, to then link with other comparable standard gauge lines at foreign ferry terminals, and on to our preferred markets. And given that is the preferred paradigm, replete with record turnaround times!
Rhrosty.

Post limit has had me stymied.

Jayb,
I have said to leave the Thomson catchment alone, do not touch it.
You apparently have expert knowledge of these rivers and their fall in the region. I hope we can keep in touch.

Reservoir's would be built as part of the water harvesting and aqueduct system. The only problem I envisage is sandy soil that would require clay lining. It's been done on slopes of the Great Dividing Range.

Getting water out is possible using aqueduct, not pipes, not by pumping.
Getting in and out is less difficult than getting into and out of outer space. Look into the Qld Development Road for example.
I made a submission aboiut this aqueduct concept to the Aust govt, (search): Agricultural Competitiveness White Paper, see Supporting Information - Green Paper - Index 'F' Fairfax JC.

You refer to Burdekin produce. Produce from the Burdekin indicates to me that increase in produce from increase in water supply could justify an inland international freight airport to Asia especially during their winter. Central and southern Qld is not cyclone prone as is the north. Wind and rain wiping out crops is obviously a handicap.

I very much appreciate discussing this with you.

Due to word limit I will make another post to reply to Aidan. But special thanks to OLO anyway for whatever time and space.
Cheers.

Rhosty,

"Aidan, what makes you think there'd be any heat generated by a completely frictionless system."
Mainly the fact that the passengers themselves generate heat. Also the electrical resistance and magnetic friction. Plus the imperfection of the vacuum through which it runs.

"Over the lifetime of a fast ferry a nuclear powered variant that only needs to be fueled once every 25 years, is going to be cheaper to run than any diesel powered variant."
What assumptions are you using? And does your figure include disposal of the waste?

"What do you think diesel is going to cost 20 years from now?"
Probably less than it will 10 years from now, as some of it will be synthesised from CO2 and water rather than made from oil.

"However given I'm in favor of a VLT and built from the ground up and operating inside its own purpose created carriageway, it can be as wide, tall and as long as we want."
The wider, taller and longer you want it, the more it will cost. And the distance from the carriage to the magnets on curves would limit its length.

"And for passengers primarily not bulk freight which would need a very different system. Which instead of stopping at every whistle stop, would simply release a wagon or two and at speed, from the tail a couple of klicks ahead of the exit line, and use gravity and switching to move them to the unloading platform, to effectively outperform trucking every which way?"
Are you still referring to maglev? Or rail?

At the moment there's no need for freight trains to stop at "every whistle stop". But releasing a wagon or two (at speed or otherwise) generally doesn't make economic sense in Australia.

You seem to be obsessed with getting everything there faster, but generally that's not what the freight customers want; reliability is.

Aiden, costs are just one part of the equation, as population is our main hurdle, that, along with the proven fact that our people don't like paying for things, toll road failures being proof of that.

If you build a HSR service from Brisbane to Melbourne, and compared that with Japan, if that's even possible, how many potential passengers will each rail link service. Do that sum and the answer will be loud and clear, its simply an unaffordable dream, always has been and always will be in the future because so many people today rely on the 3 out of 10 to pick up the slack and pay the bills.

Chances are that if we ever did see a FSR built, the entitlement brigade would whinge so loud that they would get a subsidized ticket, for which the high end would also have to subsidise.

A dog chasing its tail im afraid.