[jpd80]

Originally Posted by roKWiz

Living 100ft away from the inland rail route I watch trains everyday go past. There isn't enough freight to complete a full train at present.
I see the "One Steel" train from the Gong pass here everyday on the way to Melbourne, it is half full and willl runback the next morning empty.

Biggest problem with the IRR is it should have gone up through Shepparton, straight through towards Echuca and service the farming districts of inland NSW then onto QLD.
The existing route needs to many modifications to the existing NE rail corridor here while it competes with The Hume Hwy and has to give up priority to passenger services along the same tracks. It will never be competetive with road freight taking to long to get anywhere.

I’ve been watching the IRR development over the past five years and what strikes is the circuitous route it seems to take in certain areas, like they’re trying to include improvements in local connector services as well. Not sure about the lower NSW and VIC sections but the Queensland route is a bit perplexing. It crosses the border north of North Star then turns East before going through Millmerran, north to West of Toowoomba before heading East through a 6 km long tunnel down to the Lockyer valley.
A more direct route would take the line between Warwick and Allora, across the great dividing range with easier grades and to the Lockyer valley cutting off hours of travel.

Adelaide to Darwin has no existing bridges to deal with either. Like anything we do here these days, it turns into one big budget cut compromise, just look at NBN.

From what I can see there is loads of grade separation crossings on the northern sections, hours of travel with zero level crossings.

I would love to know how quickly one of the Janus battery banks takes to charge. Seems to me they will run out of available charging quicker than they can swap over banks.

Batteries take four hours to fully charge, a B Double gets roughly 400 km range, I’d expect a conventional semi to get around 500 km. As I said elsewhere I think Janus are seeking proof of concept to raise ~$10 million in front of a stock IPO later this year, I don’t think we’ll see much until after that happens….

Me thinks diesel will be around for a long time yet. We have used (and new crop) veggie oil everywhere in this country and the ability to produce it in large volumes without more modifications to existing heavy vehicles, surely this as a bio fuel mix is a cleaner better option until then.

There’s that but I think fleets will be looking at things like hybrids with smaller diesels to improve efficiency and save on friction braking, I like the idea of regen braking because it offers something that won’t fade and fail like conventional brake packs. From a safety point of view that has to be progress.