THE STATE-OWNED RAILWAYS
In making the trip from Sydney to Melbourne, I was painfully reminded
of the worst feature of railroading on this continent. At Albury, on
the frontier between New South Wales and Victoria, I was routed out of
my berth at daylight and compelled to change cars. Although the central
government controls the telephone and telegraph services of Australia,
the railroads are owned by the states, and since each has a different
gauge for its tracks, passengers and goods must often be transferred.
The lines in Queensland, Western Australia, and Tasmania, which are
not contiguous states, have a narrow gauge. The tracks in Victoria are
five feet three inches in width, as are those of the main lines of
South Australia. Only New South Wales and the Transcontinental line
built by the Commonwealth government have the world standard gauge
of four feet eight and one half inches. In going from Brisbane in
Queensland to Perth in Western Australia one must change five times
because of differing track widths, and this is one of the reasons why
the thirty-five hundred mile journey takes practically six days. Such
conditions cost more than time. For example, the transfer charges on
freight between New South Wales and Victoria range from thirty to
seventy cents a ton. Imagine what it would mean in the United States
if passengers and freight had to be moved from one train to another
every time a state line were crossed.
Ever since the states formed the Commonwealth there has been much
discussion of the unification of these conflicting railroad gauges.
This is certainly one of Australia’s greatest needs, but so far
the expense has proved prohibitive. A commission of three eminent
engineers, an Englishman, an Australian, and an American, recently
reported that to convert all the existing lines in the Commonwealth
to the standard gauge would cost about two hundred and ninety million
dollars. This would mean an expenditure of more than fifty dollars for
every man, woman, and child in Australia. It has also been proposed
to standardize the chief routes connecting the five state capitals on
the mainland at a cost of about ninety million dollars, but just now
even this seems more than the country can afford. Yet the diversity
of gauges imposes such a burden on Australian business that some day
unification will have to come.
At present there are about twenty-six thousand miles of railways on
the continent, of which twenty-three thousand miles are owned and
operated by the states, twenty-eight hundred are privately owned, and
the rest are in the hands of the Commonwealth government. This is about
one tenth the mileage of the United States, which has approximately
the same area but twenty times as many people. Most of the Australian
railroads are, like the bulk of the population, on the eastern side
of the continent. The great tropical Northern Territory has only one
railroad, which is but two hundred miles long.
[Illustration: Australian railroad tracks are laid on ties cut from
her forests of eucalyptus. One variety, the iron bark, is practically
immune from fire, while the kauri, jarrah, and blue gum last for
fifteen or twenty years.]
[Illustration: For years the governor of Western Australia in his
palace at Perth could communicate with the rest of the Commonwealth
only by ship or telegraph. Now the Transcontinental Railway connects
his capital with the mainland.]
[Illustration: Despite the expense in handling, Australia still ships
the bulk of her wheat in bags and on flat cars. Because of the dry
climate, it is safe from rain but much is destroyed by rats.]
In each state the lines are operated by one or more commissioners
appointed by the cabinet. The Minister for Railways directs
legislation and answers questions in the state Parliament; but
otherwise the commissioners have a free hand. Federal lines are managed
by a railway commissioner for the Commonwealth.
In Sydney I asked a member of the New South Wales railroad commission
whether he thought government control of the railroads was a good
thing. He replied:
“There is no doubt of it. The results have been so good that we are
convinced that such management is for the best interests of the people.
We are giving a better service at less cost than private roads could
do.”
“But how about the political end of the machine?” I asked. “Do not the
politicians try to manage the commissioners and control the vote of
your employees?”
“No,” was the reply. “Our laws provide that we shall be absolutely
free. The government does not dictate to the chief commissioner and his
three assistants. We have our own staff of officials, whom we appoint,
and no promotion can be made without our consent. We have about forty
thousand employees in this state alone and we are careful to do them
justice. We hold a court every other Wednesday, to which our men can
appeal if they have grievances. There are many such appeals and about
one third of them are settled in favour of the men.”
“How about wages and hours of work?”
“We have the eight-hour day and we pay higher wages than do the
European railways. Our men are better treated than those of any
railroad I know. They are under the civil service and no man can be
removed except for cause.”
“How about the profits? Do your railroads pay?” I asked.
“Yes, we usually manage to show a small surplus after meeting interest
charges on the capital invested. But our revenue fluctuates from year
to year, according to whether there is a good or a poor season for
farming and sheep raising. In unfavourable seasons the carriage of
fodder and the transfer of stock to better pastures at reduced rates
mean smaller earnings and larger operating expenses. Extensions into
thinly settled districts also cut down the net income, since several
of these lines earn little more than the cost of maintaining them.
Nevertheless, we are pushing out roads into the good territory, knowing
that settlement will soon follow and that the new lines will ultimately
become profitable.”
Another prominent official with whom I talked on this subject is a
Queensland railroad man. Said he:
“As far as I can see, the government control of our railways has
been an excellent thing for the state. It has given us profitable
railways which could never have been built by private parties. Take our
Rockhampton line, for instance. It begins at the coast and runs four
hundred miles westward through a thinly populated country. When it was
first completed there were places on that line where one could ride one
hundred miles without seeing a town. But the railroad made the land on
both sides of the track available for sheep raising. It is now taken up
for pastures, and there are hundreds of flocks feeding upon it. Towns
have sprung up along the line, and in time the road will pay well.”
“How about the profits on the Queensland roads?” said I.
“If there are any, they are never large,” was the reply, “you see we
don’t want a big profit, for it is our principle to keep the rates for
freight and passengers as low as we can. As the lines make more money
we shall lower the rates and increase wages.”
“Are you satisfied with the narrow gauge?” I asked.
“Yes. It pays us better than the broad gauge. Our roads cost only about
half as much per mile to build as those of New South Wales and they
furnish all the transportation required.”
“Where do you get your equipment?” I asked.
“We used to buy most of our rolling stock from England, but now, as in
the other Australian states, our locomotives and cars are built at the
state railway shops. Our shops are at Ipswich, which is close to big
coal deposits. We buy steel rails from the steel mills at Newcastle,
and about the only equipment we now get from abroad are patented
devices and specialties.”
I may add that not all those to whom I have talked are so favourable in
their reports on the state-owned railways. One man reminded me that in
most cases these lines, operated in the interests of the people, charge
as high freight and passenger rates as do our privately owned roads in
the States. Another calls attention to the fact that sometimes for four
years running the Australian lines have shown considerable losses and
capital is by no means always certain of the four per cent. dividend it
has a right to expect from them.
One thing that strikes one about the Australian locomotives and
passenger and freight cars is the fact that they are much lighter than
those to which we are accustomed. The freight cars seem particularly
small and light. In my trips over the country I have passed hundreds
of slat-sided cars transporting livestock. The sheep cars are
double-deckers. The Australian wheat goes to market in open-top cars,
instead of in box cars, as with us, and is handled in sacks instead
of in bulk. The wheat export amounts to one hundred million bushels a
year, and most of it is shipped overseas in bags. I have seen enormous
stacks of full wheat bags along the railways and at the ports. As
the grain is harvested in the dry season, there is no danger of its
fermentation when bagged and stacked in this way. Neither is there much
risk of its getting wet, for it is often covered with tarpaulin, both
in the stacks awaiting shipment and on the cars. There is, however,
considerable loss every year from rats and other vermin. Since she
got her grain elevators at Sydney, New South Wales has been building
special grain cars for handling wheat in bulk.
The ties for Australia’s railroads are furnished by her eucalyptus
forests, many of which contain splendid timber. The Tasmanian blue gum,
a species of eucalyptus, is one of the most durable of woods. It has
twice the strength of English oak and, used as railroad ties or paving
blocks, in the Tasmanian climate it has a life of from fifteen to
twenty years. In the dry air of Victoria blue gum sleepers last twice
as long. The jarrah, a eucalyptus of Western Australia, has been known
to withstand fire better than iron girders. This wood is one of the
few that will resist the white ants, and seaborers make no impression
upon it. I have heard that jarrah piles driven at Port Adelaide in
1868 showed no signs of decay forty-two years later. Karri is another
remarkably durable eucalyptus of Western Australia much used for ties.
Karri planks from ships dismantled after thirty years of service have
been sawed up to make paving blocks, and a log of this wood that
had lain forty-six years in mud below high-water mark was reported
“perfectly sound” by a government expert.
One of the biggest railroad undertakings of modern times was building
the Australian Transcontinental line for a thousand miles across the
desert. Until this was completed Western Australia was cut off from her
sister states by a great waste of sand and could communicate with them
only by telegraph or by sea. The ocean journey from Perth to Sydney
took seven days. Neither Western Australia nor her neighbour, South
Australia, felt able to finance an unprofitable railroad joining them
together. So it became the job of the Commonwealth government, which
began the line in 1912 and completed it five years later.
The overland journey from Adelaide, South Australia, to Perth on the
coast of Western Australia used to take two months. By train it now
takes two days. Besides decreasing the time between Western Australia
and New Zealand or America, the railroad shortens the trip from London
to Melbourne or Sydney by almost a week.
Preparing the road-bed and laying the track across the level stretches
of the desert were easy matters. The real problem was providing water
and supplies for the two construction gangs as they worked toward each
other across the hot and arid wastes, unwatered and uninhabited save
by hordes of flies and mosquitoes. Four hundred and twenty-five miles
west of Port Augusta the railroad enters the Nullarbor Plain, a vast
empty limestone plateau on which there is not a single water hole.
Here it runs in a bee line for three hundred and thirty miles--the
longest straight stretch of track in the world. The rest of the route
is through sandhill country where there are at intervals natural rock
catchment basins for water. Although this region is called a desert,
there is an annual rainfall of from two to five inches, and this was
caught in great roofed-over reservoirs and saved for the use of the
workers.
For some time the question of water supply on the Nullarbor
Plain threatened to hold up indefinitely the construction of the
Transcontinental. Then a message came from Kalgoorlie telling the
good news that water had been found on, or rather under, the plain.
The engineer in charge wired that he had pumped out seventy thousand
gallons from an artesian bore about three hundred miles east of
Kalgoorlie. Another bore, one hundred miles farther east, struck
brackish water usable for locomotives. These two wells now furnish
water sufficient not only for the railroad but for limited irrigation
and pastoral purposes besides. There are tanks every fifty miles across
the plain, connected by a pipe line from the Kalgoorlie reservoir.
While the Transcontinental was being built, and before the pipe and
the tanks were constructed, water for two hundred horses, three
hundred camels, and twelve hundred workmen had to be brought by cars
and on camel-back. At one time it was carried three hundred miles by
tank cars and thirty miles by camels to the eastern end of steel at a
cost of thirty-nine dollars for each thousand gallons. To supply the
western railhead, water was piped for three hundred and fifty miles to
a big reservoir and then hauled two hundred and twenty miles to the
construction camps.
Without the aid of camels it is probable that the Transcontinental
never could have been built. The “ships of the desert” took the
engineers on the preliminary survey of the line, they bore the men
who went along the route looking for wells and water holes, and later
on they were the indispensable carriers of water and construction
materials over miles of waste land and through months of overpowering
heat.
Every effort was made to provide endurable conditions for those who
worked on the railroad. The chief engineer and his staff lived on camp
trains specially designed for desert use. The trains consisted of
seven or eight coaches built with double roofs to give protection from
the sun. All the openings were screened against the swarms of flies,
mosquitoes, and other insects. There were, besides, a car for stores, a
well-equipped hospital car, and cars with living and sleeping quarters
for the staff.
The workmen lived in small light huts of canvas and wood, which could
be knocked down and moved, as they had to be about every three days.
Like the cars, each of the huts used for sleeping quarters had an extra
roof. The heat was often so intense that at midday it was sometimes
impossible to work, for rails, sleepers, and everything else were too
hot to touch. The thermometer frequently registered one hundred and
thirty degrees in the shade.
Supplies of clothing and food were brought up from the warehouses at
the eastern and western terminals of the road on what were known as
“tea and sugar” trains. The men were well fed and their daily menus
included not only bread and meat, but even fresh fruit and vegetables.
It cost thirty million dollars to build the Transcontinental, but this
sum is not considered unduly great in view of the obstacles overcome.
Except for the money spent in supplying water, the expenses were not
large. In no part of the route does the track cross a river or climb
a steep grade. Comparatively few common labourers were required.
Construction was simply a matter of making an even bed for the
sleepers, then placing the rails with a track-layer, and bolting and
spiking them down. The road moved forward at the rate of a mile a day.
The World War slowed up the work, for many of the construction force
enlisted. Nevertheless, at the end of five years eastern and western
railheads met, and to-day it is possible to go by train from Perth
to Brisbane on a route joining all the capitals of the five mainland
states. The Transcontinental may, perhaps, never pay in pounds,
shillings, and pence. In time saved, however, it has already proved
itself invaluable and, what is more important, it serves to bind all
parts of the Commonwealth more closely together.
[Illustration: Discovery of Australia’s artesian water has led to the
reclamation of millions of her acres. Artesian bores spouting thousands
of gallons solved the water problem in laying the Transcontinental
across the desert.]
[Illustration: Though the great gold diggings of Ballarat are worked
out, thousands of prospectors are still panning the stream beds of
Victoria, hoping for one more great strike like those of the gold-fever
days.]