Monorails are an excellent means of transporting goods, especially within a warehouse, and that's where they should be left.
http://www.materialhandlingtech.com/products/overhead-cranes-monorails/

Dear Sylvia,

Growing up in Sydney, working and studying in the city,
and living in the outer suburbs, trains and buses
were a part of my daily life. Then on week-ends,
trains and ferries took me to the beaches that I loved.
I can only imagine what a difference having access to
trains would make to the lives of people living in
rural areas. Worth every cent. I can still recall travelling
by train to Melbourne for holidays. So much fun.

So in answer to your question - " Does anyone care about
trains any more?" I do!

WE need that connection between city and country - and
country people need it even more. Train journeys are more
than just getting to places. They connect us as human beings.
I'm still hoping to also make a journey on "The Ghan" one
day to see inland Australia. Also, one day - I shall take
a trip on the Siberian railway - who knows.

cont'd ...

I should add that - I now live in Melbourne and that
the Melbourne transport system - sucks. Getting to work
from the suburbs to the city by train is a night-mare
during peak hours - especially early in the mornings
when the trains stop in between stations for ages and
nobody can get off. Fast trains may be the answer to
those kind of problems. Worth a try. In any case out train
system here in Melbourne does need a major overhaul.

Sydney's metro rail has had half a million users and they love it
Like Foxy rail has my vote and in time we will get very fast trains and a freight system that takes even more trucks off the road

Hasbeen to be clear, I’m not proposing the building of a fast train link to places like Armidale, just that the existing train service should be brought into the 20th (not 21st) century. Steam trains routinely ran at 145km/h in the UK, and I was riding 160km/h electric trains in the early 1960s.

The existing regional fleet is being replaced anyway. I’m just suggesting that some extra money be spent on buying tilt-trains instead, and then, over time, that where the track is not currently capable of supporting the tilt-trains running at the speed they’re capable of on curves, that the track be upgraded. In practice, on the part controlled by ARTC, that may well not involve doing anything. It may involve spending money on the part controlled by the NSW government, mainly because the track has suffered from lack of maintenance in the past.

The tilt-trains would not have a higher maximum speed that the XPTs (160km/h), though the XPTs rarely run at that speed now (and possibly not at all due to financial issues - the relevant government entity refused (i.e. said they wouldn't) to tell me). XPlorers were always limited to 145km/h, but there are places where they still run at that speed, even before they reach Broadmeadow on the run from Hornsby. So I’m definitely not talking about a radical speed increase, just extending the length of track that the trains can run at their nominal maximums.

Of course, one could take a different view, that government has no business being involved in transport, and that all the subsidies should be removed. That would almost triple the ticket prices in metropolitan Sydney, and quintuple ticket prices outside it. Passenger traffic on the latter would pretty much cease, I suspect, and a huge proportion of the metropolitan passengers would transfer either to private vehicles, or to buses.

On the plus side, it would end any further discussion of fast rail to Newcastle, Wollongong and Bathurst, allowing those centres to avoid becoming Sydney commuter suburbs.

Individual,

Fast monorails are an attractive concept, but the only country that has built one (China, using German technology), has not built any more despite the government not having the problem of having to justify itself to voters.

Monorails remain extremely expensive to build, in part (probably large part), because the track itself is an active part of the system, unlike the passive steel rails of conventional railways.

Even if it takes less maintenance in the long run, that appears to be insufficient to offset the much higher capital cost, or we'd be seeing more of them built, especially in places with governments not constrained by the limited time horizons imposed by elections.

Maybe the cost of one could be justified as a link to the new Sydney airport, but I'm sure it won't happen. For longer routes, especially low traffic routes, it just doesn't work financially.