Long wait for Adelaide to Darwin rail link, with historical siding routes, both involving South Australia, ends in 2003
The Ghan is the only passenger train on the Adelaide-Darwin line, completed in 2003 after a long wait and historical sidings such as the North Australia Railway in the Northern Territory, from 1889, and the Central Australia Railway, extended to Alice Springs.
The long-awaited and -discussed linking of Australia by rail from south to north looked to be fulfilled from 1983 – only to be squashed and languish for another 16 years.
Malcolm Fraser’s federal Coalition announced a standard gauge rail line from Alice Springs to Darwin, to complete the Adelaide–Darwin rail corridor, would be done for Australia’s bicentennial of colonial settlement in 1988. But Bob Hawke’s Labor government won the March 1983 election and cancelled the rail project.
In 1967, interest in a north-south transcontinental route had revived again. This had the momentum to get the 828-kilometres standard-gauge line from Tarcoola (on the east-west transcontinental rail line) to Alice Springs built from 1975 and completed in 1980. The route from Tarcoola was favoured because of less flooding threats, as against extending the standard gauge line from Port Augusta to Maree to Alice Springs along the existing narrow-gauge route.
The breakthrough for the Alice Springs-to-Darwin link came in 1999 when the AustralAsia Rail Corporation (owned by the South Australian and Northern Territory governments) was awarded the contract to build and operate a 1,420 kilometres line as a build-own-operate-and-transfer project to the Asia Pacific Transport Consortium. The consortium contracted FreightLink to construct the project and to operate the railway. It cost $1.2 billion to build.
The federal government contributed $165 million from the centenary of federation fund, Northern Territory government $165 million and South Australian government $150 million to the AustralAsia Rail Corporation for the assets by the consortium and FreightLink that were later leased for a peppercorn rent to FreightLink. The three governments also contributed about $26 million each to support the consortium with mezzanine debt financing (subordinated debt) equity and contingent equity.
Railway construction begun in July 2001, finished in September 2003. On January 17, 2004 ,the first freight train reached Darwin and, on February 4, the first passenger train arrived in Darwin from Adelaide, travelling 2,979 km in 47 hours.
FreightLink failed to make a profit in the first four years and in 2008 announced it was selling ownership of the Alice Springs-to-Darwin line, citing a large debt from its construction phase. Genesee & Wyoming Australia (later One Rail Australia) bought the assets of FreightLink in 2010 for $334 million, including the 50-years lease on the Tarcoola–Darwin line.
From 2020, the Tarcoola-Alice Springs line was owned by the Australian Rail Track Corporation and leased until 2047 to One Rail Australia. The line from Alice Springs to Darwin would be owned by One Rail Australia until 2054, when it would transfer to the state and federal governments.. One Rail Australia controlled trains on the entire Tarcoola–Darwin line, including leases for access by other rail operating companies.
The only passenger train, The Ghan experiential travel service, operated by Journey Beyond, traversed the line weekly in each direction over 53 hours 15 minutes. Pacific National locomotives hauled the train.
One Rail Australia was the only freight operator in the Tarcoola–Darwin section. Trains originated or terminated at intermodal terminals at Berrimah (Darwin) and Islington (Adelaide) and stopped at intermodal points in Katherine, Tennant Creek and Alice Springs.
The line carried bulk commodity exports from iron ore and copper mines in central Australia, including Oz Minerals Prominent Hill copper mine in South Australia’s north.