On This Day - May 19th 1948
Australia's Federal Government announces that rail gauges across Australia will be standardised.
Railway travel in Australia began in May 1854 with the first horse-drawn carriage running between Port Elliott and Goolwa in South Australia. Victoria followed with the first steam train in September of that year, which ran between Flinders Street and Sandridge, now Port Melbourne.
From the beginning of the development of railways in Australia, however, rather than having a standardised railway gauge across the continent, the colonies each adopted their own width of railway track. In Victoria, Tasmania and parts of South Australia, the gauge was 1600 mm; in Western Australia, Queensland and the remainder of South Australia, it was a narrow 1067 mm, while Tasmania also changed to 1067 mm in the late 1800s; but New South Wales adopted the standard European gauge of 1435 mm. Passengers crossing Australia from Brisbane to Perth were required to change trains six times.
When the Commonwealth of Australia was created at Federation in 1901, the new Australian Constitution made provision for the Federal Parliament to make laws with respect to railway acquisition, construction and extension within the states. This opened the way for eventual standardisation of the gauges.
World War II highlighted the difficulty of having incompatible railway gauges across the country, when large amounts of goods and personnel needed to be moved quickly throughout Australia. In March 1945, a report into the standardisation of the rail gauges was completed by former Victorian Railways Chief Commissioner Sir Harold Winthrop Clapp for the Commonwealth Land Transport Board. Following the recommendations of Clapp's report, on 19 May 1948, the Federal Government announced that rail gauges across Australia would be standardised. The European standard of 1435 mm, already in use in New South Wales, was established as the new national standard.
It took until 2004 before the capital cities, as well as Alice Springs and Darwin, were linked by standard gauge. Conversion of railway lines continues; however, some states have retained their own gauges for particular purposes, such as the high speed tilt-trains being used on Queensland's narrow gauge.