The Cassowary Coast Regional Council recently published their 2025-2026 Advocacy Plan which includes a section on a proposed light rail from Cairns to Cardwell.
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Am I thinking of the right Cardwell when my brain says āthatās more than 150km away from Cairns and already on the North Coast Lineā?
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Correct. Suggesting a light-rail is a bit of a brain fart tbch. I suspect they are actually thinking of a DMU service rather than light-railā¦
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That sounds much more realistic 
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Iām already a proponent of enhancing the NCL between Townsville and Cairns (the ~5.5hr travel time is diabolical) with the objective of additional daily service between these two northern cities - but I think a pretty substantial reduction in journey time (say, to 3-4 hrs, with an average speed in the order of 80-100kph) would be needed to pull passengers from planes or private road travel. That would take a combination of track realignments, rationalising the number of cane tram crossings and possibly an actual electronic signalling system, noting itās DTC beyond Purono (near Yabulu, just north of Townsville).
For intermediate towns, like Cardwell, the Greyhound bus seems to take a comparable amount of time to the Spirit of QLD, but it includes a 35 minute meal stop and has two daily services.
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Iād really like to see some DMU services provided between Townsville and Cairns myself. It would allow for the SOQ to skip the quieter stations to speed up the travel time a little.
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First we have a bus named a metro, the we may have a diesel train named āLRTā.
BTW I would prefer if they upgraded and realigned the NCL for diesel Tilt Trains to run up to 140kph from 80kph (in fact, it should run 140kph from Rockhampton to Cairns). Even 120kph would be a massive improvement over 80kph.
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Itās presently worse than 80kph - thatās the stated maximum line speed.
Townsville to Cairns is just shy of 340 rail km. Northwards, itās 5 hours and 25 minutes to Cairns (stops included, noting Innisfail is the only guaranteed stop and others are only where people are pre-booked); so itās more like an average of 62-63kph at present.
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There are also a number of long straight sections of track that seem to allow for 160kph running from Rockhampton to Cairns. But somehow, the tilt train is slugged to 100kph max from Rocky to Townsville, and 80kph from Townsville to Cairns.
Is it something to do with the tropical climate that hampers the track quality north of Rockhampton?
If so, that really shouldnāt be an excuse when Indonesia now has high speed rail.
I also think the number of level crossings (some sugar cane tramways) may be a factor against higher speeds.
Indeed. QR doesnāt like high speeds where there are open level crossings. And there is a lot of them in cane country where the line runs through the middle of vast cane fields for long distances. This is particularly so from about Carmila northwards. The cane tram level crossings also lead to a small break in the tracks to allow the cross, and thereās no way thatās safe at high speed.
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Indeed. There was the development of this ā draw bridge ā crossing to help with maintaining higher speeds as does away with the break in the tracks.
South of Rockhampton, the QR line is electrified and higher speeds are permitted than further north. In order to increase track speeds for the ātilt trainsā, this drawbridge arrangement was devised so there is no break in the running rails for QR. All signals are color light.
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Thatās quite an ingenious contraption! I wonder if the draw bridge being lowered completes the signalling circuit so that the block is automatically set to occupied (as a backup safety measure) 
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These look good. Iāll take 50 for the NCL please 
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I think light rail is a bit far fetched for those sort of distances, I could see why they might want LR in Cairns and Innisfail but outside of that thereās too much dead space. Not to mention thereās a perfectly functional railway corridor already there which would serve it better. Add in a few passing loops and maybe a couple infill stations and that would do the trick I reckon. But itās good that theyāre at least discussing rail options outside of SEQ.
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Slightly off topic but I was thinking about this last night - I wonder how difficult it would be to run a small DMU service from Redlynch along the Kuranda corridor to some point south (say Gordonvale) at something like a 30 minute frequency. Put up a few basic stations/passing loops along the corridor, do a bit of a bus redesign, and youāve got a rail spine for Cairns that can be progressively upgraded. The corridor even passes right by the airport as well as through the densest parts of Cairns.
Obviously this would require some track upgrades but I really canāt imagine this would be as expensive as some of the other proposals you see floating around, given that itās already an active rail corridor which handles regular passenger use. Pair with the above Cardwell link and youāve basically set the city up with its own rail network
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Either some DMUs or even some retrofitted SMUs with batteries as a proof of concept.
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The drawbridge cane crossings at Bundaberg (Alloway and Meadowvale) both have the tilt train running at 160kph across them
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The NCL North system information pack allows us to explore the scope of the cane tram crossing issue.
I had a look through the track diagrams and identified the following counts:
Rockhampton (639.31km) to Carmila (864.86), distance 225.55km: 0 cane tram crossings.
Carmila (864.86) to Home Hill (1,248.97), distance 384.11km: 9 cane tram crossings (4 south of Mackay).
Home Hill (1,248.97) to Townsville (1,340.33), distance 91.36km: 3 cane tram crossings (all near Ayr).
Townsville (1,340.33) to Cairns (1,680.64), distance 340.31km: 27 cane tram crossings.
I suppose I can revise my order for drawbridge crossings down to 40 
. It does, however, illustrate the extent of how much of this sort of infrastructure would be needed north of Townsville, relative to south of it to make meaningful gains in average speed.
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Wouldnāt electrification and straightening of heavy rail be more viable than 150 k of light rail line?
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