I once lived in a little hamlet called Burrum. It was once the northern end of the Queensland railway line, built to there for the coal they had found.

Howard became the largest town in the district, with 7 coal mines & a power house. In the 40s & 50s 7 passenger trains a day stopped at Howard, & rail lines ran to each of the coal mines.

There is still plenty of coal in the Howard, Burrum district, but it's not mined. It is much more economical to dig it out of huge open cut mines, with drag lines rather than men with shovels.

Today there is only one passenger train a day, despite huge increases in populations in the north, & you have to be booked on or off, or it doesn't stop. It is difficult to book onto that one train, as it is today full of pensioners using their free rail trip. The governments gave free trips to pensioners as it was embarrassing having empty trains thundering along the tracks.

Just because something was once useful, eve a critical necessity, does not mean it will continue to be useful.

Continued

Continued

I went to Bathurst a while back for a car club event. Bathurst was very run down from when we lived there in the early 50s. I drove across to Young, where we had an orchard after Bathurst. Blaney, Cowra, & the villages along the way were also depressing in their fading. With mechanisation farm labor jobs have disappeared, & there is no reason for the existence of these once thriving towns & villages. Schools & shops have gone, as have all younger folk.

Young is doing OK, due to a large increase in the cherry growing industry. This creates a lot of work for locals, if only mostly the cash in hand type for the welfare crowd. It is only special high profit small scale agriculture like this that helps fund country towns today. Pity there aren't more opportunities for such development.

This depopulation of the bush will continue as agriculture becomes even more corporate, & smaller family farms diminish. Rail will have to invent new ways or goods handling if it is to compete with trucks. And don't worry about electrification, & zero emissions. The idiots pushing this stuff have no idea. Without a huge nuclear development of our power system, there is no way coal, gas & petroleum is not going to be around driving civilisation a very long time, if civilisation itself is to survive.

oops, in the last post when I said "suspended monorail line", I meant elevated monorails in general.
Suspended monorails are a subset of general elevated monorails. Here's an example of one of the first suspended monorails ever built and amazingly it is still in use today: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuppertal_Schwebebahn.

construction of monorail lines is more expensive than surface trains.
thinkabit,
That would be off-set by the gain of useable land & gradually stabilising reduced on-going costs overall.
Plus, there's no need to build the whole network in one hit. It has to be an on-going project that pays for itself as it economically snowballs.
Again, the magic term "future investment" ! Just think of the hundreds of thousands of permanent jobs that'd help create thousands of Trade apprenticeships & careers.
The environmental pressures could be taken away from the coats by establishing inland communities, away from the severe weather experienced on the coast.
Also, because it would be a future orientated infrastructure for new communities, many of us should just start the project & then let the next generation get on with it. They'd more than likely do a much better job than the self-centred gits we've had lately ! Hell, they may even have the sense to permanently flood Lake Eyre ! I'm certain that the next generation will not be as stupid as the past three !

Hi Hasbeen, and I'm one of the auld pensioners enjoying the $50 return twice a year Maryborough West/Townsville. Sorry off topic but between the QR staff (nice galley), hotel accommodation 10 days twice, local attractions, pubs and restaurants, we are helping regional areas with employment. Hope you can enjoy it someday too.

Hasbeen, well there is some hope for the regions in that the real
estate people report that there has been a large increase in people
selling up in the cities and buying houses in country towns.
I do not know how they are going for employment but I presume they
are not moving without looking for a job first.
I notice that NSW Planning Dept has moved to Nowra.
Another large Dept, Lands, I think it might be, is in Bathurst.

As far as freight handling most now is in standard containers.
I see them going through here, miles long, at something like 100km/hr.
After Parkes they are double stacked but east of Parkes there are too
many low bridges and tunnels to make double stacking feasible.
In Brisbane I believe they have an automatic unload/load to trucks
system which speeds things up no end.
Trains going to Broken Hill, Sth Australia and West Australia are
double stacked.

As far as nuclear is concerned I am afraid this will be the scene
before too long. When the next two power stations are closed and
blackouts commence in earnest an enormous horde of housewives with
cold dinners and unemployed workers will demand nuclear power tomorrow morning !