Journal Article

The Grafton to South Brisbane railway was the first result of the Commonwealth's attempt to unify Australia's railway gauges and was a genuinely national project, largely funded by the Commonwealth. It was the first inter-capital railway deliberately built as such in the country. Its conception varied greatly from previous colonial and state railways, which had been built to meet the needs of each colony or state, without consideration of national interests. Defence was a factor in railway building for the first time. A Commonwealth Royal Commission recommended how uniformity of Australia's railway gauges could be achieved in 1921, but the Grafton to South Brisbane railway was the only project to be funded as a direct result of the Royal Commission, due to hostility from the Victorian and South Australian governments in particular. As such, it marked a beginning of what was to be the long-delayed national project of railway gauge standardisation.