Railway Digest Magazine March 2017 Back Issue

SCT commences Melbourne – Brisbane services
As foreshadowed in our January issue, SCT Logistics commenced operating rail services between Melbourne and the company’s new terminal at Bromelton, 49 kilometres south of Brisbane’s Acacia Ridge freight terminal, from 21 January. The inaugural service departed on that day from the company’s Altona terminal with SCT Class EMD/Downer units 004, 007 and 006 hauling 37 vans of palletised freight, plus a crew car and container wagon carrying an on-line refuelling tank and a container. John Hoyle reports.

Sticks and Tricks
The use of traditional timber sleepers is becoming problematic. Main line railways are using fewer of them (so almost not at all). The timber cutters and sawmills that provided them are closing, and good timber suitable for railway sleepers is getting harder to obtain. Concrete is favoured by most ‘commercial’ railways these days, but they don’t come cheap, and they always need mechanisation for any handling. David Campbell takes a look at new alternative to timber and concrete, currently undergoing extensive testing, that could make a big difference to the permanent way of heritage and secondary main lines.

South of the border
We present some recent images of operations around The Garden State.

The AK Cars go north-west
The AK Track Recording Cars traversed a fair chunk of the NSW railway network throughout December last year and January of this year. These operations saw the cars traverse the Hunter Valley several times. During late December maintenance was carried out on the train at Goulburn, and after a transfer to Sydney, the AK’s left on an excursion to Brisbane. Luke Stewart caught up with AK cars, and the two LVR 47 Class units hauling them, at the once-important railway town of Binnaway, on the line between Werris Creek and Dubbo.