this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2025
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Should Newcastle to Sydney bullet train really be first link built of Melbourne to Brisbane route? (www.theguardian.com)
submitted 3 months ago by Zagorath@aussie.zone to c/australia@aussie.zone
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[–] Jumuta@sh.itjust.works 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Quiet small upgrades are good. You do a couple of them and your rail network becomes a lot more usable.

Establish national standards for high-speed rail, in a way that is classic-compatible, so that trains can run slowly on legacy lines

I don't think this is as useful or easy to do as it might seem, because track gauge/electrification standards are all over the place and sharing tracks with normal trains makes your HSR unreliable and constrained in terms of scheduling. Even normal rail lines barely share track because you don't want issues from one line cascading onto another

[–] AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 2 points 3 months ago

The sharing is better than nothing. For the first/last mile of accessing central stations, that is the norm in countries like Germany, and a Sydney-Melbourne Shinkansen turning into a XPT somewhere around Wagga Wagga where it rejoins the legacy line is also doable, and better than the status quo. And gauge seems to be a settled issue everywhere except for Queensland north of Brisbane and the Victorian suburban/regional networks, whose interstate-reaching routes have all been regauged.

Trickier details would be electrification (you’d want 25kV AC to deliver enough power to accelerate fast, but in Melbourne/Sydney, you may need to either make do with lower legacy voltages, necessitating multi-system capabilities as in Europe, or have a dedicated road).