When I lived in Canberra I got a lift in a car to Yass Junction station to take the slow train to Melbourne. Later when I lived in Yass I drove a car to Canberra airport to take a fast plane to Melbourne. Go figure.

Turnbull is in a nation building frenzy at the moment. To justify not building Badgery's Ck airport a train would have to get people from home to a destination maybe no more than an hour longer but say at 50% the total fares. That includes the extra time and cost of a bus or taxi to or from home to the station.

If the rail line was freight oriented not passenger avoiding city stations it might not get built. The east coast cities would go ahead with second airports. On the other hand if diesel and jet fuel doubled in price we'd need to electrify transport via rail as much as possible.

Like the Ghan a railway to nowhere which very few will use build it as a freight line may be,but generally its just another National party boondoggle

I'm afraid Everald, you have agreement from yet another who won't be around long enough to actually do anything.

Its a coalition initiative, they know what is good for you. Besides that it will be seen as good debt and not counted. It could be a good idea to see where this rail line is supposed to go. If it is going to be for passengers as well they probably need two different routes.
It is a long way you probably would need to routes to get there.
You can cover 2,000 kms at 80 kph in 25 hours Thats not bad.

The shallow thinking in this article does not bode well for the success of the project, even if one did not see it as another NBN-quality catastrophe.

John Howard failed to pay a multi-billion dollar political debt which existed only in Everald's mind, even though he had been an upaid fund-raiser for the Liberal Party with no strings attached.

"That decision blows the theory that politicians are duty bound to repay political debts, not that I ever expected him to do so," Everald says. So there was no political debt, but Howard was duty bound to repay it. But didn't. And wasn't expected to do so. Beats me.

According to Everald Compton, a truck is a truck. The huge B-doubles which "crush" highways will magically become suitable for local deliveries and their drivers will go home every night. Wonder how the economics of that would work out.

Everald's fantasy train would travel at 120 kph and thus be faster than trucks, even though it would stop at multiple freight centres along the way, not only to deliver freight, but to pick up freight, too, and deliver it to ports, notwithstanding that the only ports on the Melbourne to Brisbane route will be, ah, Melbourne and Brisbane.

All this despite the fact that his previously planned Toowoomba-Gladstone link "became unviable when the mining boom collapsed". Well, that must have been a shock!

Thank God Malcolm Turnbull is the PM who has committed to the Brisbane-Melbourne line. We're lucky we have a PM with his great record of success in managing the NBN project. And the ABC. Now for the inland rail line. Cometh the hour, cometh the man.

Quote "Turnbull is in a nation building frenzy at the moment."

WRONG Turnbull is on the nose with the voters and is desperate buy people to vote for him and party.

Next will come the lies of what he will do, but really has no intention of doing.