Qld Rail abandons far north freight services
Letter to the Editor
Kuranda scenic railway next to go?
As we all know the Queensland Labor government are well and truly broke from poor decisions made by people who couldn’t run a bath. Queensland Rail is a prime example.
Does anyone remember when freight was hauled by locomotives up and down the Kuranda range to service Cairns, Atherton, Mareeba and Cape York?
Fresh produce, meat, sugar, molasses, grains, fuel, cement, cattle, steel, marble, slate, timber, building materials, groceries and general freight were the backbone of Queensland Rail in the Far North employing hundreds directly and servicing thousands of Queenslanders.
It was the perfect system to keep large trucks off the dangerous, winding Kuranda range and small country roads, securing fresh produce for Cairns international airport for export, Cairns Port for sea transfer also further south for our Queensland brothers and sisters.
All gone now thanks to the mismanagement of Queensland Labor government.
Cairns misses out completely with fresh produce and freight now going directly down the Palmerston Range straight to Brisbane by road transport.
Now days fresh produce travels by road to Brisbane markets then comes back to Cairns and the far north doing about 4000km and who knows how many days.
It’s about to get much worse.
Queensland Rail seems to be abandoning freight all together, the latest refusal from Queensland Rail freight services was to the Cairns regional council for a contract to haul Cairns waste rubbish from the trommel at Portsmith transfer station to be disposed of at the Mareeba landfill
Queensland Rail has sold all remaining freight locomotives for scrap, leaving three 60 year old locomotives for the Kuranda range tourist train only, two for daily service and one for emergency rescue which means if one locomotive is decommissioned the service is finished. Queensland Rail sold all the sister locomotives for spare parts no longer having parts to fix the three remaining old locomotives.
I don’t like uncovering a problem without a solution and yep, I got one
Let’s get the freight back on the rail where it belongs and produce going to a new market in Cairns. Lets get cold storage at Cairns airport again for fresh direct export. It will save the Kuranda scenic railway and add new rail freight infrastructure, make our roads safer and last longer along with employment for families, build new opportunities for our farmers, but most of all securing sustainable fresh affordable local food supplies for Far North Queenslanders.
from
Jase FNQ
Posted on February 9, 2023, in General, Queensland Rail and tagged Kuranda Rail, Kurands Range Road. Bookmark the permalink. 25 Comments.
Cairns News 
Qld government is most inept group of people ever to sitin parliament. But then what does it say about Qldrs ?
They herd like sheep on the Pacific hwy. Do what there told and believe everyone what’s to move to Qld. People running business there are the most dishonest you can find. If they did nt get the Olympics nothing would be done there for 20 years. Knowone has any vision for the future. Huge public service. Councils take months to fix a problem.
Some GPs won’t see new patients.
Beware tourists ! I could continue but Surfs up at Burleigh that’s all that matters .
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Tony, I think “money” and never ending “economy cycles” have numbed the masses, all of course led by Professional Politicians who use Main Media (Murdoch) well to their advantage;
Stock Markets and “International Trade” run rampant with Speculation and when some Speculator decries X is worth 10 Shekels, the people cry “I’m Rich” so go and buy another Lego house; Two weeks later a scandal emerges and X is now worth 1 shekel; Mum and Dad now not only have lost the new Lego house, but also the roof over their head;
More worries for Mum and Dad; Distracted; Downhearted; Beaten……and so the politician who knew all this would happen (planned) goes about setting new nation robbing policies and sells off more Publicly Owned assets to cook the Parliament books while no one is watching…….
Rogues and Bounders indeed
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Wontbdenied… Funnily enough, I was reading through the letters to the editor in a 1860s Aussie news magazine and several respondents were attacking the suggestion that politicians be paid. The critics predicted that this would lead to “rogues and bounders infesting Parliament”. Back in the 1980s, I noted the intensely proselytised slogan then being pumped around the nation that “If you feed politicians peanuts you will get monkeys”. I kinda think we were smarter a century ago.
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Tony,
Your model seems to me what the The Constitution Of The Commonwealth Of Australia outlined regarding “representatives” of Parliament in that there was (is) no place for the “professional politician” that we have today;
I can only imagine how great Parliament could be IF we had people in there not for great remuneration or presumed power, but people who basically volunteer (paid very little, no perks or outrageous pension schemes) their time to guide the Nation out of the Love of doing the work;
There is no need to be a “world player” in the US FED Debt-Slave system; The only time any Corporate Government made any “money” was soon stolen by the likes of Keating and Costello…..By the way Costello, where is that “futures fund” that you withdrew from The People?
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I won’t use the @ (attention of) symbol as apparently some here think it is some type of code or such;
To those i say, get over yourself; In this age of internet discussion it came to my attention that in order to reply to a certain identity in a thread, the ampersand symbol is used to get that individuals attention;
Maybe there’s a tad too much paranoia in your drinking water……
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Hi ,janicew37 Thank you. So what if people disagree. This seems to be a place where one can have a conversation. We do not have to agree. How boring it would be if we agreed on everything. We can learn from others.No one is going to abuse you. And if they did, so what ? Do you know the old saying, ” Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me.
You may have knowledge I and others need to know. Your opinion make enlighten us, so…
Sure there are people who know a lot of stuff But NOBODY knows everything.I want to read what you have to say.
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Won’tbdenied… There are a few thinkers out there, who now realise that political parties and lobbies exist at our expense.
This may sound a little outrageous but I have designed a government structure in which a three-tier referendum enables every adult Australian to contribute to policy: either as a tick box version, or in detail in certain selected portfolios; or for the really dedicated, the capacity to comment on every policy domain, and to any extent. The public service then implements the consensus, under public scrutiny.
In 2001, 2004, 2007, and 2010 I surveyed door-to-door across a full sample national demographic and from that I was able to identify what policies the vast majority of people would gravitate towards. They were way smarter than the politicians would have us believe. One startling revelation was that 54% knew unemployment in 2010 was between 15% and 30%, while government claimed it was 4-5%. This means that even back then, government had no credibility with more than half the population.
What are excluded by consensus protocols are: political parties, lobbies, corporations, campaigns, media monopolies, parliaments, candidates, elected representatives, and foreign influences. Just ordinary Australians determining their own future. I have experimented and found pretty much everybody draws the same conclusions because everybody just wants their families to be happy.
Funnily enough, this is exactly what Abraham Lincoln called for at Gettysburg, and what Thomas Paine wrote about in the Rights of Man. Any other form is what Lord Acton was talking about when he said “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.
In the times when technology was so primitive that the tyranny of distance was a reality, representatives were a necessity, but you could never be sure they conveyed the people’s consensus. Mostly, they did not.
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to comeinspinner…rejanicew37…ive thought the same for a while now,mainly because,the only comment visible is,,,,@,,,maybe its a secret signal..
like the old time spies used to put in the news papers..haha
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So would we. Some intelligent readers years ago proposed the rail link be extended between Greenvale and Weipa. You would
notice the ad in the RH column of CN proposing same. Ed
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Well said Tony. We await the day. Ed
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Yep! I used to love getting the train to Kuranda and Mareeba for 40cents in thew 1970’s. And the road was only 2 lanes…one each way. Barbara J Gibbs, Dip.Diet& Nut:BA/BSc:Grad.Cert.OSH;TEFL Cert Ganoderma Distributor http://www.online-ganoderma.com/gibbsbj http://online-ganoderma.com/gibbsbj
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@ tonyryan43
I get some restoration of my Faith in Australians when i read common sense as you have articulated here;
We are speaking the same language my friend;
If only a huge heaping handful of others would comprehend just what Politics is and what it has done to the living standards of the average Australians then we could end the Circus and stop paying the Clowns to enslave us
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I have better, far more workable solutions Jase FNQ;
1) Forget about exporting Our Fresh Produce and keep it here in Australia for Australians; It comes from Our Soil; Keep it on Our Tables;
2) Forget about asking the “government” to develop anything as it will inevitably cost at least 10x more than it’s worth and take 5-10 years longer than it should;
3) Demand and keep on Demanding that the QLD “government” be dissolved and a Constitutional Rule Of Law Government be (re) installed via Hand Counted elections; The potential candidates will come from Local Communities pre-selected by Local Community; No Corporate entities whatsoever will be eligible to sit in Parliament; Excluded from Parliament are Labor, Liberal, Greens, Nationals, One Nation, UAP or any other “Political Party” registered as a Corporation
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Rail requires minimal maintenance and takes up little space. Roads and motorways are expensive to maintain and occupy vast areas of terrain, making this land unproductive. Moreover, every time a road is built owners must be compensated. Rail is economic when it comes to fuel. Road is not.
The day the US launches its war with China, as recommended by the 2015 Rand Report, Singapore will cancel our fuel shipments and Australia will be without fuel within two days.
This is the kind of logistical nightmare the ALP will inflict on Queensland, replicated across Australia, because the LNP has done no better.
We should have learned by now that representational government merely delivers corruption. The people need to formulate all policy, and for the public service to implement this, unmodified by lobbies and self-interest groups. But the average person is so brainwashed that viewing reality with clarity is beyond their current capacity, and so we will have to wait until the corrupt system collapses and their enforcers are dying from the jab; then we can reconstruct Australia unimpeded.
Those Australians who are so cerebrally damaged that they can only replace one ism with another ism, will fall by the wayside. Only the thinkers will prosper.
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Agenda 21: phase out petrol/diesel, no private ownership, etc.
UK FIRES org/absolute-zero – download the report, see Chart on pgs 6-7
It’s a controlled slowmo demolition in prep for the Great Reset.
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100% They have been pushing us into bare boxes in the cities for years.This is what the council amalgamations were about.They intend to remove our access to our own country.
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I would like to see the Greenvale line rebuilt and extended onto all the way from the Port of Townsville to Weipa for all heavy freight leaving the Kuranda line to railcars that transport light freight and passengers out into the Gulf all the way to Normanton .
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do you not see it is part of the WEF NWO plan to drive people from the bush regions into 15 min cities where the people can be monitored, controlled with limited freedom 24/7
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Unfortunately, once the Labour Government(s) all around Australia decided to turn away from all beliefs in a Power higher than themselves, and those of us whom they no longer serve, they became fools.
They spent our hard earned money on road transport Semitrailers etc. instead of reinvesting it back into improvements in the rail systems!
And then they signed onto the WHO, WEF, UN and WWG without our approval or vote. This means that they must ban all those goods, you have mentioned, especially the Meat, as they mean we all can live fairly healthy long lives!
The UN is the body most responsible for pushing up the price of meat products (by an excise applied at the wholesale level to hide this money grab and all the while saying the exorbitant increase is to pay the farmers a more equitable price at market. LIARS!)
But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickedness. They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them. For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.
Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused. Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools. Romans 1:18-22 (NLT)
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The State is not moving forward, the negativive principiles and proceedures from the Premier are reducing Queenslands efficiencies. Rail in Queensland has never grown like other States leaving it with an enviromental disaster due excessive truck usage now. Remember this at the next election.
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Oh yes !
I remember back in the Goss gov da6s when 2 of the budding ( evidently) future national leaders audited the line between Mareeba & Atherton. A small million dollar plus budget was spent replacing the sleepers first , of course because it just couldn’t be done otherwise. They then determined the the usage didn’t justify the upgrade.
But there’s more . Those sleepers that sat dormant on the unused rail tracks were pulled & a cycling , walking & horse riding track was created. Is it used – maybe not.
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The only stupid question is the one not asked. It means I don’t have anything to say because there is a person who always ridicules what people say but I want to see what other comments come through.
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Okay, stupid question. What does janicew37 mean ? Duh .
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@
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