Inland Rail train travelling across country.

Inland Rail

Project Summary

Project summary

The Inland Rail project is Australia’s largest rail infrastructure project.

Commencing in 2015, and with an anticipated construction window spanning almost 10 years, the 1700-kilometre rail line will deliver greatly improved freight haulage across rural Australia.

This is a once-in-a-generation project connecting regional Australia to domestic and international markets via key interchanges at key transport hubs.

This rail line is the key transport “artery” of Australia’s national freight network between Melbourne and Brisbane. This vital link will run via regional Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland.

The Australian Government, through the ARTC is delivering this multi-billion dollar infrastructure project in partnership with the private sector via a PPP.

…what we did on this project

Touch Projects are engaged to provide project management services for the works between Tottenham and Albury-Wodonga.

This section of Inland Rail is planned along 305km of the existing rail corridor from metropolitan Melbourne to the Victoria-NSW border at Albury-Wodonga.

This project will see enhancements of existing structures providing increased clearances along the rail corridor. The enhancement works are required to accommodate double-stack freight trains of 7.1 metres high and 1,800 metres in length to be run on the track.

There are 24 sites where enhancement work needs to be undertaken, including:

  • Track lowering to give the height needed under bridges for double-stack containers
  • Several potential road or pedestrian bridge replacements where the track can not be lowered
  • Signal structure modifications where parts of the current structures may infringe the area, and track diversion at Wangaratta.

The Touch Projects team is managing the development of design documentation, including the engagement with various stakeholders such as VicRoads, Country Roads and Local Governments to obtain approvals.

We also work alongside the ARTC Communications and Stakeholder teams during the periodic community engagement events. The objective of these engagement events is to respond to various technical questions, provide clarity and project updates, and inform various affected groups of impending works.

View our other Heavy Rail projects.