Inland Rail is nationally important infrastructure that will increase resilience and improve supply chain productivity between Melbourne, Perth, Sydney, Newcastle, the Illawarra and Adelaide, to meet our growing freight task.
Inland Rail project will connect the new intermodal terminal at Beveridge in Victoria with the existing Brisbane to Sydney east coast line at Kagaru in Queensland. The project will support a double stacked service offering between the intermodal terminal at Beveridge in Victoria and the proposed terminal at Ebenezer with a single stacked service offering to Kagaru.
The Australian Government is taking a staged approach to the delivery of Inland Rail, prioritising construction from Beveridge in Victoria to Parkes and Narromine in New South Wales by 2027. For north of Narromine, the work is underway to complete required environmental planning approvals and acquisition of land needed for the project corridor to provide more certainty that the project can be built to an agreed budget and timeframe.
When fully completed, Inland Rail will provide freight train operators with:
- A 1,600 kilometre inland railway traversing eastern inland Australia;
- Up to 21 tonne axle loads at a maximum speed of 115 kilometres per hour;
- Container double-stacking;
- Maximum train lengths of 1,800 metres (the equivalent of 110 B-Double trucks),
- Scheduled transit times of less than 24 hours between Melbourne and Brisbane, which will be up to 10 hours faster than via the existing coastal rail route through Sydney.
Over 70 per cent of Inland Rail will involve upgrading existing infrastructure (‘brownfield’ construction). The remaining section consists of ‘greenfield’ construction, chiefly the Narromine-Narrabri section and most sections in Queensland.
Independent review of Inland Rail
- The Delivery of Inland Rail: An Independent Review
- Australian Government Response to the independent review of Inland Rail
Further Information relating to the independent review of Inland Rail can be found on Trove.