The Ghan

Assembled from 19 blocks · 1 evidence · 9 related

1. Story
2. The Adelaide–Alice Springs and, since 2004, Adelaide–Darwin service across central Australia. From August 1929 it ran on the Central Australia Railway, a 1,067 mm narrow-gauge line laid on a bad alignment through country subject to flash flooding and washaways. The answer was not to repair it but to abandon it: a new standard-gauge line was built well to the west via Tarcoola, and the last narrow-gauge Ghan left Marree on 25 November 1980. The extension north from Alice Springs to Darwin opened in January 2004, and the first through train left Adelaide on 1 February 2004, reaching Darwin on 3 February. It is the clearest case in this Journey of a route that was moved rather than inherited, because the original survey was simply wrong.
3. Knowledge
4. The Ghan
5. Track gauge as a colonial decision
6. Connections
7. Track gauge as a colonial decision
8. The Ghan begins running on the Central Australia Railway
9. The last narrow-gauge Ghan leaves Marree
10. The Ghan runs through to Darwin for the first time
11. The Blue Train
12. Rovos Rail
13. The Ghan
14. The Union Limited and Union Express begin running to the mail ships
15. The Ghan begins running on the Central Australia Railway
16. The last narrow-gauge Ghan leaves Marree
17. Rovos Rail runs its first train
18. Evidence
19. Supports the Central Australia Railway as the Ghan's original 1,067 mm narrow-gauge alignment from 1929, its replacement by a standard-gauge line via Tarcoola in 1980, and the 2004 Darwin extension. V55 verification basis: the library collection was identified as an authority and the chronology was carried in attributed Australian rail-history summaries; slsa.sa.gov.au was not fetched.