Tenders open for abandoned regional rail line

I moved back into Country NSW in 1977 from City Living and worked at Canowindra & Cowra. At that time, passenger services to Canowindra had been suspended, but freight was still carried there & on to Eugowra. Cowra had the choices to travel to Sydney via Blayney or Demondrille to utilise the Western Line or the Southern Line. Freight arrived in Cowra via Rail & over $3 million was spent on a freight hub at Cowra in the early 1980’s, only to have the line closed about a year later & trains replaced by trucks.
A few recent trips along the goat track they call the Olympic Highway have revealed severe deterioration of the line, but it is not quite yet ready for retirement as it services some vital communities along the way.
I am a great proponent for Rail Trails & this line would surpass many in terms of scenery, climate and tourism potential, but I do concede that it would be far better served as a rail corridor.
I now live adjacent to the main Southern line in a predominantly grain growing area where I see grain silos lying empty and grain trucks moving produce to huge open air storage points served by rail, but in most cases the trip is now 30 to 40 kilometres instead of 10 or 12 as it was in the 1960’s.

If the government is serious about its activation plans, it also needs to reopen the Canberra to Cooma railway and continue it through to Jindabyne via Berridale. This would greatly alleviate the heavy traffic on the Monaro Highway, especially in peak winter periods, also offering a new tourist service that would also connect to Bombala.

It would be great if the line could be brought back into operation. As for Carcoar Tunnel could it be opened out to make it a deep cutting. So much of the railway is all old steam age alignments with steep gradients and sharp curves. I don’t hold out much hope of the two branches to Grenfell and Eugowra being brought back into use with Cowra Council having removed the bridges in Cowra that carried the Eugowra branch citing “safety” reasons. A lot of track ballasting was done on the line shortly before it closed.
If another line could be put in at Demondrille off the up main southern line making it a connecting spur onto the Blayney-Demondrille line then there would be no need to run to Harden and run the locos round their train to head back to Demondrille and up the line to Blayney.
If the same thing were done at Wallerawang with a connecting spur onto the Mudgee line and the Mudgee line was reopened to Gulgong where it connects with the Ulan line then freight trains could easily run up the main southern line to Demondrille and onto the line to Blayney and then onto the main western line to Wallerawang and then onto the Mudgee line to Gulgong to run on the Ulan line avoiding Sydney altogether.
The new inland rail route is only single track and if the Blayney Demondrille line could be made to accommodate double stack container trains by opening out Carcoar Tunnel which would need to have the heritage order on it lifted or deepening the tunnel and the same with Capertee Tunnel then double stack container trains could use the line.

We need to see a committment from.all authorities to reinstate rail right across the country.

Been talking about this since Pontious was a Pilot, just do it. Should never been closed in the first place, ditto all the branches that had many grain receiving points. So much for strategic, efficient transport planning in the past?

I was an asm at young railway station

I can remember how much freight was carried on the line between Blayney & Harden, likewise the two branch lines, much of the old types of freight no longer exists especially for this line, but much of the reason was the condition of the lines, various governments over the times were not prepared to bring the line up to more modern standards, also in part was the very effective turning away of freight of many types across much of NSW during the later 60’s & on into the 80’s that saw the general decimation of so many branch lines that were left with no business and costs transferred to regional roads with road transport taking over.

The old rail bridge at Cowra is a wonderful reflection of old world infrastructure brought up to date by modern technology and bridge building methods, I would doubt that the bridge would need a great amount of money to repair where needed. I would say that the Carcoar Tunnel is perhaps the biggest issue along the line, aside from the old bridges, and grades on the line which really still are of old steam age routing.

The tunnel as such to cope or cater for more modern train movements and loads though does provide the largest hurdle for the line on the Northern or Blayney side of Cowra. To bring the tunnel up to modern standards that would remove much of the problems from a former time, would not be cheap and still could provide provide problems as such unless the old was removed and rebuilt but, have we not seen enough of our history destroyed by the same method and reasoning in many areas in the NSW regions?

The tunnel as is could well remain as a tourist attraction by general safety improvements for people to walk through, to do so would mean a diversion section of track could well cost not much more than a rebuild or refurbish for rail traffic of the tunnel. A new route on the western side of the tunnel constructed by means of a cutting progressing under the Mid West Highway with a road bridge over the line and have it connect back to the existing upgraded line on the Cowra side of the tunnel.

While this may not be cheap, it would be interesting to see a cost comparison between the tunnel upgrade and new bypass to see what difference there would be and benefits to and for the future.

This and so many other regional railway lines need to be reinstated! Our roads would be in much better shape if we kept using these lines. Well worth the public expenditure.