INLAND RAIL

WHILE the good people of Toowoomba and surrounding areas are waiting at a rail crossing for the new, huge, super-fast Melbourne to Brisbane train passing, they can reflect that very few people they know actually benefited from this train.

In fact they will probably know a truckie or two who have lost their jobs due to it.

So when the magnificent engineering monstrosity is belching burnt diesel fuel into the air, they can think to themselves ‘“perhaps I should have done more to stop this waste of tax payer dollars getting to Toowoomba, maybe I should have shown my dislike for the way the government was bulldozing this project across peoples’ homes’ gardens and livelihoods and maybe I should have put up a few protest signs or written to my local paper or government representative to stop it before they started”.

They always said it would take 50 years to become profitable but with all those unforeseeable setbacks it has had, I do not think it will ever cut even.

If you are unlucky enough to live within earshot of the train and received no compensation because it did not go through your property, perhaps you will think maybe I should have made a bit of an effort to stop it in its tracks before my house price plummeted and I now can not sell it for what I could a few years ago.

Very few, apart from those people that are steering the project will benefit. Who do you know that will drive their produce to the freight hub at Toowoomba rather than take it straight down to Brisbane, which will be two hours away. Companies in the past who had use of rail sidings and loading bays now use the road as it turns out to be quicker and cheaper. Why do you think when most of Australia’s freight was transported by rail in the past, it is now transported by road and the lines are left to rust unused.

Because of costs and usability, people did not use the train freight option; they tried it and it did not suit. We would not have a lattice of unused rail lines across the country if it was that good.

Whoever thought that Toowoomba is on the way from Melbourne to Brisbane, they must have been looking at the map a very different way to me.

If they want speed, why would they push a gargantuan train up one of the highest mountain ranges in Queensland to drop off or pick up a few carriages of freight.

Would you not go directly to the port and send a smaller, lighter train on a spur line to cart the cargo up and down the range to the port, because this would save enormous amounts of time, fuel and money.

So please show your feelings to your local public servant before they start putting the railway line across 16kms of floodplain and bringing this monstrosity to a crossing near you.

PAUL CLAPHAM, Southbrook