Harold Winthrop Clapp - Commonwealth Land Transport Board

Commonwealth Land Transport Board

In February 1942, Clapp was appointed Director-General of Land Transport by the Curtin Government to co-ordinate Commonwealth and State road and rail transport. In 1944, he was asked to prepare a report on the standardisation of rail gauges in Australia.

The Second World War, in generating greatly increased rail traffic through the shipment of men, munitions and supplies around the country, exposed the inefficiency of a national rail system built on several systems built to different gauges. Multiple break-of-gauge points across the country between 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) narrow gauge, 4 ft 8½ in (1,435 mm) standard gauge and 5 ft 3 in (1,600 mm) broad gauge compromised the ability of the railways to support the war effort and required upwards of 1,600 men at various break-of-gauge points to transfer cargo from one train to another.

Clapp submitted a national rail plan for the complete conversion of the Victorian and South Australian broad-gauge networks to standard gauge, the conversion of the Silverton Tramway and south-east South Australian narrow gauge lines to standard gauge, and the linking of Perth to Kalgoorlie by a new standard gauge link, at a cost of £44,318,000. He further recommended and the linking of Darwin to the national network via a new standard gauge link to be built from Queensland at a cost of £10,898,000, and a new inland standard gauge link through New South Wales and Queensland, cost £21,565,000.

Parochial state interests thwarted the plan from being adopted. New South Wales refused to ratify the agreement as only a relatively small proportion of the project cost would be spent in NSW, where almost all track was already standard gauge. South Australia objected to the Darwin link being built from Queensland rather than extending the existing Central Australia Railway link from Adelaide to Alice Springs.

Clapp's report was used in 1956 as a basis for further recommendations by the Government Members Rail Standardisation Committee chaired by William Wentworth, which concluded that "while there may be considerable doubts as to the justification for undertaking large-scale standardisation of Australian railways under present circumstances, there can be no doubt that the standardisation of main trunk lines is not only justified, but long overdue." By 1962, Melbourne was linked to Sydney by a standard gauge link, and by 1970 the standardisation of the transcontinental link from Sydney to Perth was completed.

Another key element of Clapp's 1945 proposal was delivered, at least in part, with the standardisation of the broad gauge Crystal Brook line connecting Adelaide to the transcontinental Sydney–Perth railway in 1982, followed by the standardisation of South Australia's non-metropolitan broad gauge network and most of the broad gauge network in western Victoria in 1995, including the main Melbourne-Adelaide railway.