Australian Two Foot

[James Patten]

I noticed a new person on the board who lives in Australia and involved with the Light Railway Research Society.

At one time Australia had over 1800 miles(!) of two foot gauge lines, mainly sugar cane mill lines.  I'm guessing there weren't a lot of Common Carrier lines.  I think I've seen that some of these mill lines have modernized to a great degree.

[James Patten]

Ira pointed me to a link which discusses modern day sugar cane railways.  Point your browser to http://www.lrrsa.org.au/LRR_SGRz.htm.  According to the article there's now 4000 kilometers of 610 mm (2 foot gauge), which I think works out to 2500 miles.  Wow.

[Matt Latham]

Wow. 2,500 miles of 2 foot track. I just moved Australia to the top of my places to visit before I die list.

Nice picture of a Plasser GWS 75 spot tamper about 2/3 of the way down the page.

Thanks for pointing it out. Very interesting web site.

[Mark Edry]

When my wife and I were in Queensland for vacation with friends in 2001 I was surprised to stumble across a 2ft sugar cane line. Unfortunately at the time we were on the way back to the airport to come home! So all I managed was a couple snapshots of rows of empty cane cars:



Go for the trains.. stay for the snorkelling.

[Mike Fox]

Those cars look wider than our equipment. I know sugar cane probably isn't heavy. I hope they come with a jack and blocking to re-rail that car on the far right.