THE railway reached Moree in 1897 and a station at Inverell opened three and a half years later in November 1901. At its peak there were 20 smaller stations along the length of the line; a few were closed in 1971 and the majority were closed by the end of 1975. By the mid 1980s the line was being progressively closed and has not operated since 1994.

Now there is a push to start a feasibility study to assess the viability of something a great deal more ambitious - a rail link from Moree via Inverell to the coast with the development of international port facilities at Goodwood Island at the mouth of the Clarence River or at Coffs Harbour.

The first person to put his shoulder to the wheel in this infrastructure improvement was Mal Peters, chair of Regional Development Australia – Northern Inland and an Inverell Shire councillor.

A former president of the NSW Farmers Association, Mr Peters recently wrote in our sister publication, The Land, about the need for this rail link.

“I think we need a bold and innovative plan to break the troika of buggered roads, clogged ports and uncompetitive freight prices and perhaps an inland railway from Northern NSW to a Clarence port might just do the trick,” Mr Peters said.

“The proposal would be to build a dual line capable of managing double-stacked trains for maximum efficiency.

“One of Australia’s biggest private grain exporters told me on a trip to Sydney a few months ago he is finding hard to compete with Canada as our freight cost have become uncompetitive so urgent action is needed on that front but the current discussions are around sending them north into another saturated freight line system into Brisbane or all the way to Gladstone in Queensland,” Mr Peters said.

Preliminary work assessing the viability of a Moree-Iluka rail link had already been done and Mr Peters said the rail grades are acceptable and the distance is not very long.

Another shire councillor, engineer David Jones, said the project was very feasible and necessary.

“We’re looking at something in the vicinity of $2.5 billion to build the line, and possibly something like another billion to develop the port, either Yamba Port or Coffs Harbour,” Mr Jones said.

“It is achievable, I’ve used the 1:25,000 maps to g right through there and we can get a 1:100 grade up and down all the way from Moree to Braunstone, just south of Grafton, with a maximum radius of 300 metres.

“And it could be financed from the Regional Development Fund that the independents negotiated with the Gillard Government,” Mr Jones said.

One very good reason why Mr Jones believess the railway should be built is the future.

“The inland railway from Brisbane to Melbourne could be 10 years in coming,” Mr Jones said.

“Most of the coal from Gunnedah and Narrabri has yet to happen and we now have a shortage of ports in Australia, we are just so very short of infrastructure in this country,” Mr Jones said.

The first step, of course, will be the feasibility study Mal Peters is pushing for.

“We need infrastructure 20 to 30 years into the future,” Mr Peters said.

© 2011 Inverell Times

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