The Commonwealth Railway’s Trans-Australia Railway was built through some of the most inhospitable country imaginable as part of a promise that would ensure Western Australia joined the other colonies in forming the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901. Over 1,000 miles of railway was constructed through the desert where no permanent sources of surface water could be found for the entire distance.

Following the opening of the railway in 1917, services across the remote Nullarbor Plain would push steam locomotives and their crews to the limit of mechanical and physical endurance. Poor quality bore water, non existent local coal supplies and the ravages of long distance desert operation would lead to the steam locomotives used to have extremely short working lives.

Diesels would be the answer with General Motors (through Clyde Engineering in Sydney) building the locomotives that would transform the operations of the Trans-Australia Railway. These were the Diesels of the Desert - The Commonwealth Railways GM class.

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0:00 - The Nullarbor Plain and the Trans Australia Railway.
2:54 - Matters of Motive Power.
4:35 - Steam locomotives of the Nullarbor Plain.
13:29 - Dawn of the Diesel Age.
16:26 - GM and the GM class.
23:47 - Delivery and entry to service.
27:58 - Leigh Creek coal.
34:47 - Loads East, Loads West.
36:48 - “Waters of the western sea to the eastern ocean sand.”
43:41 - New motive power.

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