Construction of the long-awaited Inland Rail is scheduled to start next year following a $300 million allocation from the federal government.
The project has been discussed for many years as a way of moving freight from the regions to the ports more quickly and economically.
The team responsible for delivering the project, the Inland Rail Implementation Group, met community members and stakeholders at the Narrabri Bowling Club yesterday to explain its progress and direction.
The inland route, known as the far western corridor, passes through Albury, Stockinbingal, Parkes, Narromine, Gwabegar, Narrabri, Moree and North Star before heading into Queensland through Yelarbon.
It will continue through Inglewood, Milmerran, Oakey, Gowrie, Rosewood and Kagaru and finish in Brisbane.
Narrabri Shire Mayor Cr Conrad Bolton said it was logical that the Narrabri area would be the site for one of the inter-modal hubs on the route.
The implementation group is working from a 2010 study into the Inland Rail, which chose the far western corridor over a number of alternatives.
A senior advisor on the project, Dale Budd, said the corridor was 170 kilometres shorter than the coastal route and would slash the transit time by 10 hours.
Although the specific land to be affected by the route hasn’t been finalised, former Deputy Prime Minister and the implementation group chair, John Anderson AO, told yesterday’s meeting that the implementation group was “not far off that point now where you can have concrete certainty where it’s going”.
Mr Anderson said the inland route was the missing link in Australia’s rail network, which is the sixth largest rail network in the world.
“The government’s put some hard money on the table to kick things off: $300 million,” he said.
“We’re charged with finalising the route.
“The 2010 study looked closely at a few routes and came up with the model that the government has essentially asked us to take forward.”
He is confident regional communities, farmers and businesses will support the project, and has already been assured by one major supermarket chain that it will use the infrastructure when it’s in place.
“I definitely think it’s an economic reform that’s in the nation’s best interest,” he said.
Three sections of the track have been identified as priority projects and, according to Mr Anderson, will immediately improve rail transport in those local areas.
They include a major upgrade of the network between Narrabri and North Star, an upgrade from Parkes to Narromine, and construction of the Rosewood-Kagaru section near Ipswich, Queensland.
Australian Rail Track Corporation – Inland Rail construction manager Jim Armstrong said construction of such an extensive corridor across three states would be complex.
Locally, the project will need to consider Narrabri’s flat typography and tendency to flood, national parks and cultural heritage sites, mineral resources licences, major farming operations and reactive soils.
“The black soil country here is not favourable to building rail track so the natural ground surface needs a lot of work,” Mr Armstrong said, adding that the design would vary to suit each location.
The Inland Rail will incorporate the latest technology, much of which has been developed in Australia, and will be built to accommodate the larger, longer trains of the future.
It will also have the ability to expand and be updated with new technology, dubbed “future-proofing”.
The track will transport double-stacked container trains, though this will require making adjustments to bridges and tunnels where such containers won’t currently fit, running at a sustained 115km/h.
Passing loops will be included to reduce delays.
Forty-one per cent, or 700 kilometres, of the Inland Rail is already part of the existing interstate network, and a quarter, or about 400 kilometres, will comprise upgrades to existing corridors.
Another 600 kilometres will be greenfield construction, including rural, forest and semi urban areas.
Mr Armstrong said the greenfield process, the most labour-intensive part, would offer opportunities for local employment.
The implementation group will identify the land to be acquired in September and deliver a final costing of the 10-year construction plan to government in December and January.
Mr Budd said the corridor was the way forward in transport, as without it, the coastal route would choke with congestion by the middle of this century.
The Narrabri, Moree, Gunnedah and Tamworth councils were represented at yesterday’s meeting and Mr Anderson encouraged them to voice their support for the Inland Rail to keep it on the agenda.
“We need your support and enthusiasm, we need you on the case of your local state and federal members and we need you to be thinking laterally about how you can use it,” he said.
“We need you to be the wind in their political sails.”