SAR Scenario East-West Express
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2 Vintage East-West Express: Terowie to Port Augusta Passenger |  |
| A scenario in the SAR Peterborough Base Session | ||
| A limited stop passenger service from Terowie to Quorn. |  |
The Historical Bit
From 1917 to 1932 the Terowie-Peterborough-Quorn-Port Augusta Line was a vital part of the transcontinental rail link between Sydney, NSW on the east coast and Perth, WA on the west coast.
The South Australian Railways provided an express passenger service, the East-West Express, that ran between Terowie and Port Augusta via Quorn. The name "East-West" came from its role in connecting the eastern side of the continent to the western side - in reality the service ran mostly North-South. The return service, from Port Augusta to Terowie, was called the West-East Express.
At Terowie it connected with broad gauge services from Adelaide and Melbourne. At Peterborough it connected with narrow gauge services from Broken Hill where there was a standard gauge connection from Sydney. At Quorn it connected with narrow gauge services from the Central Australia Railway . At Port Augusta it connected with the standard gauge Trans Continental Railway to Kalgoolie, where there was a narrow gauge connection to Perth.
Passengers making the entire trip from Sydney to Perth would:-
- change trains 5 times - at Parkes NSW, Broken Hill NSW, Peterborough SA, Port Augusta SA and Kalgoolie WA plus take a taxi between two stations in Broken Hill
- change track gauges 3 times - standard gauge to narrow at Broken Hill, narrow gauge back to standard at Port Augusta and standard gauge to narrow at Kalgoolie
- navigate through 5 different rail systems - NSWGR, Silverton Tramway, SAR, Commonwealth Railways and WAGR
The entire journey, from coast to coast, could take 6 days, if all the connections were made.
In 1932 a more direct broad gauge line from Adelaide to Port Augusta via Port Pirie was completed. This cut nearly 70 miles (113km) off the journey. The East-West Express then ran as a broad gauge service on that line although an express passenger service continued to run between Terowie and Port Augusta until 1937. In 1970 the narrow and broad gauge lines from Broken Hill to Port Pirie, Port Pirie to Port Augusta and Kalgoolie to Perth were converted to standard gauge, followed by the later conversion of the broad gauge line from Adelaide to Port Pirie.
Today passengers can board a luxury train, the Indian Pacific, in Sydney and travel the entire distance to Perth via Adelaide in 3 days without leaving the train or changing gauge.
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Each location in the layout has a detailed set of track diagrams that provide a variety of useful information The Getting Started guide below gives a summary of what is available.  graphic, or go to the bottom of the page for all the session links (all links will open in this window). |
Getting Started:
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to take control of the loco
tab gives an overall summary of each location with a "potted" history (where available).
tab reveals the invisible 
Track Marks for Drive To commands.
tab lists all active industries and their commodities.
tab describes the names, locations and settings of all junction switches as well as some switch sets you may want to use.
Tutorial:
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This page was created by Trainz user pware in February 2021 and was last updated as shown below.
