A $6 million contract for feasibility and design work on the Illabo to Stockinbingal section of Inland Rail has been awarded by the Australian Rail Track Corporation, with further planning and design contracts to be handed out in the coming months.
The companies WSP Australia and Mott MacDonald (trading as IRDJV) have been awarded the contract, with the feasibility design work to build on the ARTC’s preliminary investigations and community consultations in the area.
“Today’s contract award continues our commitment to see the project delivered, with construction in parts of New South Wales set to commence in 2018, creating thousands of jobs along the way,” federal transport and infrastructure minister Michael McCormack said.
The Illabo-Stockinbingal section, a 37-kilometre greenfield section of the Inland Rail in southern NSW, will bypass the Bethungra Spiral track and provide a direct route from east of Illabo to Stockinbingal and the existing Forbes rail line.
McCormack called the Bethungra Spiral, which was built during the Second World War, a “significant engineering and technological feat” of its time, but remarked that the new track would significantly boost regional agricultural freighting productivity.
“Local know-how helped deliver this Spiral, and today we are looking at how we can draw on local skills and ingenuity again, by designing a section of rail that allows us to achieve a freight connection between Melbourne and Brisbane in less than 24 hours—which is what this contract will help to achieve,” he said.
The ARTC has said that the feasibility design on this stretch would provide the basis for further planning, and would enable the community to have more information about how the project was proceeding.
“This feasibility design work will give us information in terms of engineering, environmental, traffic and other impacts, which we can use to design and build the best possible rail line,” the ARTC’s Inland Rail program deliver director Simon Thomas said.
“It will lay the groundwork for the detailed design for these sections, and there will be more contracts awarded by ARTC over the coming months in regional NSW.”