Description

By John Wilson. Published by SAR Lines, 2024. 230 pages, A4 size, hard cover, colour & black and white photography included.

From the infancy of Australia’s rail networks in the 1850s, different gauges were accepted in the different colonies with all manner of justification. Even with the Federation on 1 January 1901, the opportunity to embrace a national policy to rail gauges was overlooked by the newly anointed nation’s leaders and they conveniently sidestepped the problem.

This book is generously supported with photographs, timelines, and the opinions of many people with appropriate experience in the rail business. The narrative is inclusive of the various political and social attitudes that prevailed over the last 170 years and explores the lost opportunities to ‘fix’ the problem dating back to the 1880s.