Monday, February 4, 2008

Adelaide's trains

This photo shows Adelaide's metropolitan train depot; on the north-western outskirts of the city. Adelaide's trains run on diesel fuel and and are an aging fleet. All other capital cities in Australia have electric trains.

Currently there is a lot of discussion about what to do in the future to modernize them and improve the services; including a proposal to go electric. The State's opposition political party has costed the project at 1.5 billion dollars and is suggesting it will make it part of their election campaign in 2010.

3 comments:

Raquel Sabino Pereira said...

That's a great idea!! I will soon publish a photo of Lisbon's trains!
I love the colours!!!

Anonymous said...

Will it being electric make it more enviromentaly friendly...surely the same resources i.e. fossil fuels will be used.

Gordon said...

Clarice,
That is certainly one of the arguments against it; but not all electricity generation is with fossil fuels - 15% of our electricity is generated by wind turbines and other technologies are being tried/developed eg geothermal

Apparent advantages of electric trains are speed and quietness.