2004: A Freight “First” for a Newly Completed Railway Line in Australia

January 17, 2004

In Australia, the first freight train to travel on the Adelaide-Darwin railway line in its entirety reached the end of its long journey. This long-anticipated line serves as a major transportation link between the cities of Adelaide, the capital of the state of South Australia; and Darwin, the capital of Australia’s Northern Territory (NT). The final segment of this rail corridor, covering about 882.4 miles (1,420 kilometers) between Darwin and the NT town of Alice Springs, had been completed that previous September.

The inaugural freight train for the full length of the Adelaide-Darwin railway line consisted of both crew cars and flatcars mounted by containers. This train, which can be seen in the accompanying photo, was hauled by National Rail (NR) class and Commonwealth Railways (CR) class diesel-electric locomotives.

John Kirk of Railway Gazette International was among those on hand for the departure of the train from Adelaide. He reported, “As the brightly-colored FreightLink train eased out of Adelaide at 11:15 a.m. on January 15 to begin its 3000 kilometer [1,864.1-mile] journey north to Darwin, it carried more than containers of general freight. With it went the wishes and hopes of thousands of people who had gathered to give the train a rousing send-off.”

This train arrived at East Arm Port in Darwin at 1:30 p.m. on January 17 to what Kirk called “an enthusiastic welcome.” John Howard, who was prime minister of Australia from 1996 to 2007, proclaimed that the opening of the fully finished Adelaide-Darwin railway line “represents a momentous achievement.” A similar travel milestone for this rail corridor took place on February 4 of that year when a train carrying passengers reached Darwin 47 hours after departing from Adelaide.

Photo Credit: Library & Archives NT (licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en)

For more information on the Adelaide-Darwin railway line, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adelaide%E2%80%93Darwin_railway_line