New passing lanes to improve rail efficiency: ARTC

<p>Work has begun on two new passing lanes &#8211 each 7 km long &#8211 to speed up rail traffic on the main Sydney-Melbourne line between Wagga Wagga and Albury.</p> <p>Site works underway on the passing lanes, at Gerogery and Culcairn, includes bulk earthworks, services and drainage works.</p> <p>Funded under the Australian Rail Track Corporation’s (ARTC) $2 bn North South Investment Strategy, the new passing lanes make a total of four on the line.</p> <p>Over the next two years, a consortium will construct 17 new passing lanes, also 7 km in length, between Junee and Melbourne. </p> <p>ARTC chief executive David Marchant said the use of the regularly spaced 7-km long passing lanes will remove the present restriction on the Sydney- Melbourne line caused by irregularly spaced crossing loops with maximum lengths of only 1.5 km.</p> <p>&#8220The passing lanes will allow trains to pass and cross at speed along the 472 km of single-line track between Junee and Melbourne, by providing double track passing lanes at around 40-minute running time intervals,&#8221 he said.</p> <p>The civil and signalling work is being undertaken under the North South Strategy’s $560m Southern Improvement Alliance (SIA), an alliance between ARTC and John Holland Rail, MVM Rail and O’Donnell Griffin supported by sub-alliance partners Kellogg Brown and Root, and CW-DC.</p> <br />