WWII steam Alice Springs
General Douglas MacArthur arrival in Australia began with his railway journey - the brief back-story is explaining the three different rail gauges (widths between the tracks) used in Australia.
In the 1940s, different states used one or more of three different gauges for a variety of political, economic and historical reasons. South Australia used all three. They were narrow gauge (3ft 6ins or 1067 mm), broad gauge (5 3 or 1600 mm) and standard gauge (4 8.5 or 1435 mm).
Since the 1990s, most of the long distance trains have been converted to standard gauge, so passengers can now traverse the country more conveniently. But this isn t universal, and there are still some areas where the gauges vary, for one practical reason or another.
Crossing Australia On The Ghan
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January 26 is Australia Day.
To help mark the occasion, we’ve decided to revisit this article on the Ghan, the country’s iconic cross-country train.
David Kippen wrote this piece for us on the occasion of the train’s 90th anniversary. We first published it in “The People’s Friend” Special 180.
The iconic Ghan train takes three days and two nights to travel 2,979 kilometres (1,851 miles) from Adelaide, on South Australia’s temperate coast, through the outback and across deserts to Darwin, in the tropical “Top End”.
2020 marks 90 years since the Central Australian Railway, fondly called the Ghan, reached Alice Springs in Australia’s remote centre.
The FHWA awarded $2.1 million to the Virginia Port Authority for its Autonomous Truck Ready project.
The Virginia Port Authority has been awarded a $2.1 million grant from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to develop a proof of concept using an autonomous truck to access terminals and deliver and receive containers.
“This grant will help drive our initiative to establish the building blocks to make The Port of Virginia the first terminal in North America that is prepared to service the next generation of high-technology, over-the-road trucks,” said John F. Reinhart, CEO and Executive Director of the Virginia Port Authority. “The extensive technology already integrated into our terminals uniquely qualifies us [Virginia] to take a leadership role that will shape the vision of how marine terminals will handle the exchange of containers between semi-automated terminal equipment and intelligent over-the-road vehicles. This industry is evolving and our goal to be at the for