Salt Lake Tribune | 1917-10-07 | Page 57 | Australia to be spanned by Rail

AUSTRALIA TO BE SPfflBI HAIL Great Transcontinental System Sys-tem Will Be Completed at an Early Date. EXTENDS 34S7 MILES Is the Second British Road of Its Kind in the j World. MELBOURNE, Australia, Sept. 25. (Correspondence of the Associated Press.) The Australian continent, is at last about to be spanned by rail. Com pletion of the event is timed for an early date. The ceremonies which will mark it will signalize these facts: Australia's transcontinental railroad system will be the second British system sys-tem of its kind. The first, historically, is the Canadian Pacific system. Tho Cape-to-Cairo road in Africa, Cecil Ehodes's great project, has yet to be finished. Allowing for differences in gauge, there will be through transportation in tho commonwealth from the Pacific, to the IndiRn ocean. The greatest distance ordinarily involved will be 3-167 miles, from Brisbane, Queensland, to Perth, Western Australia. Links Being; Completed. The completion of the federally otvned 1052 miles of rail in southern Australia between Port Augusta, South Australia and Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, will bring the states of Queensland, New 'South Wales, Victoria and South Australia, Aus-tralia, into direct contact with the at present ijuasi-isolated state of Western Australia. This federal Port Augusta-Kaleoorlie line, commonly called the "East-West" railway, will link the stateownea railway rail-way system of Western Australia with the successive state-owned systems o South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. The East-West railway eventually will virtually revolutionize Australian traffic, traf-fic, particularly that to and from England En-gland and Europe via the Suez-Colombo route. Big Help to Traffic, It will obviate the previously indispensable in-dispensable sea carriage of passengers, mails and cargo (other than for Western Australia) from I'remantle, "Westorn Australia, around Cape Leeuwin to Adelaide, Ade-laide, South Australia, in order to obtain ob-tain their transportation bv rail to Melbourne, Mel-bourne, Sydney, Newcastle and Brisbane. Bris-bane. Tlie effect will be same westward west-ward from Pacific ports involving; American Amer-ican imports for " estern Australia. Tho saving in distance thereby will be 1350 nautical miles and in time from four to five days. The road will furnish the famous Kal-goorlie-Coolpardie gold fields in Western West-ern Australia with, aa outlet other than Fremantlc The East-West railroad not only will "represent the first attempt to provide a commonwealth procedure and policy of railway management," to quote the minister t!or works and railways, William Wil-liam A. Watt, but it will represent one of tho last stops in Australian-, federation. Condition Fulfilled. Sir John Forrest, now commonwealth treasurer, refused, when premier of Western Australia in the late J0U 's, to permit the then colony to federate with the other colonies unless a railroad were built binding the proposed union together. to-gether. This condition tho commonwealth common-wealth will have fulfilled when the railroad rail-road is finished. The road was intended to cost $20,-22S,000. $20,-22S,000. When completed it will bnve-cost bnve-cost $:i3,336,000. The first sod for it waB officially turned in September, 11UL'. Its building is regarded an an extraordinary extraor-dinary railroad performance. One thousand miles of it traverses a ,vast stretch of country which, until it was begun, virtually was trackless and waterless; had been without human habitation hab-itation at least 140 to M0 years, and contained little animal life. Tho difficulties dif-ficulties of constructiuu have been enormous. enor-mous. Nor will maintenance be easy. -Incidentally, American rails and American Amer-ican locomotives entered considerably into the road's construction.