Re: Other side of Narrow Gauge: TasRail

There's a short but steep climb straight out of the Burnie yard on the line running south. The main line heading east follows the sea-side as far as Devonport before turning south-east and inland. Eventually it reaches a junction where it branches either north to Launceston or south to more distant Hobart. As with railroads around the world, there are many former branches no longer in use, many of which have had the rails pulled up and a few of which are now home to preservation organizations. The remaining portions of the state network--mostly the main lines--have seen some investment in recent years in an effort to get some of the heavy traffic off the highways.

The Tasmanian network is one of the historic cases of the narrow gauge winning out versus a wide gauge. The original line running out of Launceston was laid to a wide gauge but was changed to 3 foot 6 for the sake of standization as the rest of the state network was built to narrow gauge. History has shown that in railroading, uniformity of track gauge matters a lot more than what the specific track gauge happens to be.