I don’t think Varsity is in the wrong spot - TMR has just dropped the ball by failing to get a developer on board to do something with it. Similarly Nerang.
Ormeau is very much in the wrong spot though.
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I don’t think that would have helped matters honestly - it was pretty well inevitable that the Varsity Lakes town centre would be co-located with the Bond University campus, which long predated the railway line. Bond was the original major destination of the area.
Similarly, the Nerang township dates back from the 1870s - while the train station’s location alongside the M1 makes sense from that respect, they still put it on the opposite side of the M1, ~1.5km from the town centre. Also, the flood prone nature of the vacant land neighbouring Nerang Station would have been an issue as well (which handily preserved that track of land for use as part of the Coomera Connector).
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Varsity Lakes to OOL heavy rail advocacy group
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Really good opportunity to advocate for more transit
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1 QldGov and Commonwealth take the Heavy Rail to the Qld Border at Coolangatta - 2) NSW and Commonwealth take it….drum roll….all be seated…..have any heart medication etc nearby…..NSW and Commonwealth take the line “over the historical/imaginary border line” into Northern NSW.
I assure you - do NOT be affraid, in New York City, you can get on a train in Mid Manhattan, it goes into a tunnel and the next thing, you’re in….another state (NJ)!!! No one passes out, or turns into a frog etc…it IS possible! Welcome to the 20th Century….even in ‘stralia……just stick to the 20th….the 21st will fry their govt boffin brains……urban trains…crossing “state borders”…what next…the round wheel!!! How many more generations will it take….2, 3…… 
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Needs to be move northwards to Eggersdorf, no doubt. It will also allow for trains to actually pick up speed between the new station and Pimpama.
But I digress.
NSW trains travel to Vic, QLD and into ACT (aka XPT and their replacement). There is nothing stopping QLD Rail having trains go into Northern NSW except political. NSW/Feds might have to pay for and maintain the track. They may be a time when NSW trains run along the NSW Coast again and then there could be a need for Dual Guage but that is not in anyone’s near nor mid future.
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Yeah but these are not URBAN rail services, they are longer-distance passenger services. There’s NO-WHERE, in all Australia, where an URBAN rail serrvice does (or even can) cross a state border, other than SEQ into Northern NSW!
A train is a train!! It doesn’t know it’s an urban train or a non-urban train.
The point was that State Governments can and do operate trains (irrespective of its configuration or purpose or name) across boarders so it’s physically doable!
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Big difference between long-distance passenger [really freight based] operations and daily urban passenger operations! Henry Parkes, considered the “Father of Federation” wouldn’t entertain the idea, of a single inch of Queensland track entering NSW…that’s your starting point!
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Assuming they use the same gauge tracks in NSW then there isn’t any problems.
Can’t they just ‘move’ the imaginary border more south so it covers Terranora Creek so more of the Tweed is in QLD including the Airport?
The State Gov killed any chances of a heavy rail extension once they committed to the Gold Coast highway expansion. All those NIMBY’s that opposed GCLR4 will not be getting heavy rail. No promises were made; no funding allocated; no plans or studies have or will be happening. 
Whether or not that loaded public survey for the GCLR4 was designed or subtlety hint at favouring heavy rail, or the locals at Palm Beach were told otherwise that heavy rail would be built remains unclear. The end result is that the current State Government will not be building any more heavy rail extensions, and those NIMBY suckers that cried over light rail got played by the State.
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Regarding the heavy rail going into NSW, it seems unlikely, purely for political reasons. I recall around the time the go card was first introduced, Translink approached Transport NSW about integrating the Tweed Coast buses (then run by Surfside, now Kinetic) into the SEQ go card fare area. NSW were entirely uninterested, and to this day, they are two separate fare areas. You need to pay separately to travel from say Coolangatta to Tweed Heads South, and in fact, if you use the Translink Journey Planner, it will tell you to walk from Wharf St!
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I have a vague recollection that NSW has a law against building non-standard gauge track anywhere in the state. I could easily be wrong though.
If they do, it must be fairly recent (haven’t heard that before). NSW had some narrow line gauge lines e.g. Burrinjuck tramway, and there was quite a bit of 5’ 3" gauge railway that came across the Murray River from Victoria.
NSW Railway Lines Other Than Standard Gauge
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Right - interesting. It looks like there are/were several extensions of interstate non-standard gauge track into NSW. That suggests there would be no major obstacle to QR-standard line extending into northern NSW.
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