Freight train meets suburban rail

Today we were heading to Belair National Park to blip a magnificent avenue of gum trees. Being that it is 40C in the shade, I felt that this avenue would make a good shady blip on such a hot day. On entering the park, you must cross the bridge over the railway line leading into the Belair railway station 100m away.

I noted a huge freight train coming towards the bridge from behind me, and so I quickly changed my blip plans and made the passage of the train beneath me my blip for today. The trees can wait for another day!

This photo puts into perspective several other blips in our area from recent weeks. At the top right of the picture, you can see the communications tower I blipped on October 12th, the Belair Railway station in the centre, blipped October 30th, and top right the St. Johns school that now owns the old church I blipped on November 6th. You can see from the many gum trees that this is a high fire risk area.

The Adelaide Hills rail alignment is part of the interstate freight corridor that connects Sydney and Melbourne (and to a lesser degree Brisbane) with Adelaide, Perth and Darwin. The interstate track runs parallel to the suburban passenger rail network from Belair to Adelaide. (See a local passenger train with the yellow cabin coming towards me.)
See the whole meeting even better in LARGE.

Steep grades and tight curves force trains to travel more slowly through the hills, and to use 50% more locomotive power per tonne than on other interstate rail freight corridors. They also restrict trains to a maximum of 3,500 tonnes, a figure we are sure is regularly exceeded.

Currently there are 86 rail freight trains per week (approximately 12 per day) with trains up to 1.5 kilometres in length that use the Adelaide Hills corridor through Belair and the Adelaide Hills. They are all on their way to Melbourne and Perth, and soon they will be replaced by even bigger freight trains 1.8km long!

The lines were built a long time ago for steam trains, not for massive freight trains which pose a serious threat to the safety of local hills residents, especially in built-up areas. 8 years ago this month there was a freight train derailment on this line 200m below our house.

These trains were then much smaller (shorter) and luckily no one was killed, although substantial damage was done to the line and infra-structure. I took many photos of the derailment and naturally we are extremely concerned by the noise and safety risks of these huge trains.

You can see and hear these freight trains on this line in this YouTube clip.