There’s a game our family likes to play called Australian Rails.  It has a map of Australia with cities, each with things that they sell or buy and players build railroads with crayon across the continent trying to earn revenue.  It is based on the American game Empire Builder.  There are certain hazards, derailments, track washouts, even dry lakebeds filling up with water.   You know of the hazard possibility before you build track but they occur randomly throughout the game.  Because of the game several of the towns on the map were ones we wanted to visit.  Between each town there were hazards.  I never knew how realistic the game was until this week.

The first railway was built in Australia in 1831 to haul coal from Newcastle (appropriately enough) to Sydney.  But the final transcontinental link was not completed until 1970.  Goods and people could travel across the country but not on one train.  Each colony developed its own railway system, on its own gauges.  If the railway engineer was a mining engineer working in mountains there was a good possibility that he would choose a narrow gauge of 3 feet 6 inches.  If the engineer was English, he would choose the standard 4 foot 8 ½ inch gauge that was based on the width of a Roman Chariot.  If the Engineer was Irish, he would choose the 5 foot 3 inch gauge, an even 1600 mm, used in Ireland.  It’s wider and makes for a smoother ride.  So. Australia has a mix of gauges.  Queensland, Tasmania and Western Australia use narrow, South Australia and Victoria wide and New South Wales, the British standard.  You could travel across the country between states but you had to change trains at the border, and shift cargo.  The busiest stations in the country were not in the cities but in the middle of nowhere at the colonial and later state borders.

The British tried to get Australia to standardize but States were more interested in extending rail services to new settlements or mining areas than in rebuilding existing railroads.  They could never agree on a standard for a trans continental line.  This gave MacArthur’s staff fits in World War Two when they needed to move goods and troops across the country.  But it was a boon to the labor unions who, surprisingly, did not oppose standardization. 

It wasn’t until 1970 the first transcontinental rail line was complete and the Indian Pacific was launched as one of the last great named trains.  And even then, the train bypassed Adalaide and riders had to change trains. Standard gauge did not reach Adelaide until 1988.  (The Ghan was narrow gauge and was rebuilt to the 4’ 8 ½” standard. If you are on the national standard gauge, it can be difficult to bypass on another line because that line is of a different gauge.  On this trip we saw quite a bit of track that had three rails, with an off center rail to accommodate the narrow gauge still largely used in Western Australia.

On this trip we got to experience some of the hazards we played with in Australian Rails.    We left Kalgoorlie/Bolder at a little after 9 AM.  We went almost immediately to brunch.  The club car had been rearranged in tables of two and four.  After brunch I went back to the cabin to nap.  The stewardess, Martha, told us that there had been a big rainfall in Cook.

After napping we joined Choo and Trudi for tea, enjoying the scenery passing dry lake beds covered with white salt, red soil and scattered trees. 

Some of them had been planted in rows to avoid erosion.  We passed Naretha and were entering the Nullarbor, Latin for “no trees” a high limestone plateau.  Just before Rawlinna, a major sheep station and one of the markers on our Australian Rail game board, we pulled onto a siding and waited. 

Our train was 34 coaches long and not all sidings can accommodate us when a priority westbound freight is going the other way.  This wait was particularly long.  Then we saw our engine pass us on the siding.  Soon we started up, going the wrong way.

There was no west bound freight.  It was east of Cook where the heavy rain that Martha said might happen washed 100 meter long strip of the ground out from under the track.  A few minutes later we had an announcement.  We were heading back to Perth.  Looking at our watches we thought we would wind up in Perth sometime in the very early morning.  But the team leader came on again and said that because we were low priority we would not get in until 1:30 the next afternoon.  The musician came into the club car to entertain us as we began our long back track out of the Nullarbor.

We would miss our evening off train experience in Cook, which I had particularly been looking forward to.  I wanted to be able to look at stars in the desert.  Given the rain I doubt that would have been possible anyway although where we were the sky was a startling blue.   In compensation we would have a complementary wine and cheese pairing after dinner. 

Dinner conversation across tables consisted of our interoperations of the force majeure clause in the fine print of our carriage contracts to try to figure out what we would be responsible for and what may be covered by the company.  The train was organized as several separate units with either kitchen cars, baggage cars or staff cars separating the three Platinum clusters of 28 from each other and from those in gold class.  There was Wi-Fi on the train but it was spotty and we only got into cell range sometimes but there was quite a bit of texting between sections of the train when we did get cell service.  Some people from the cruise in Gold wanted to get off in Kalgoorlie and bus to Albany to pick up the ship, some of us wanted to go on to Adelaide.  Trudi and Choo needed to be in Sydney by a certain date.  So, we reread the fine print.  As it happened, we didn’t need to, the company treated us very well.

Between dinner and the wine, I did some more exploring of the train.  I got a peek at one of the gold class diners.   

Just before nightfall we saw what looked like big hills.  They were Kalgoorlie’s tailings dumps.  We stopped for a while, I asked if I could get off and walk away from the train to look at the stars.  They said no. At night in Australia, off the trails, there are things that can kill you, including the Eastern Brown Snake, wandering dingos and stampeding kangaroos. 

Oue section leader, Lucus, told us they would try to get those of us who wanted to get to Adelaide to Adelaide and those who wanted to go to Syndey to Sydney.   They needed to know who wanted to go where and who wanted to stay in Perth.  They would let us know in the morning.  They had more than 200 people to deal with.  Not my headache.  I went to bed, again with the blinds open so I could watch the stars.

The country we passed through east of Kalgoorlie was beautiful. I have posted a few of those pics here. I will post a whole other gallery of train pics that you will be able to see. Also stay tuned for the finale, how we get to Adelaide.