Just this last week Australia has finally seen the 100 year old
promise of sucessive governments both state and Federal to build the
longest  direct north-south railway line in the world to carry  the
train known as  "The Ghan" from the southern coast at Adelaide City to
the most northerly coast capital at Darwin, a distance just a few
kilometres short of 3000 kilometres. It goes through the rugged and 
very sparsley populated centre of Australia where it is largely desert
although a couple of major towns as well. The latest pictures of this
train, (over one kilomtre long) in the middle of the beautiful central
Australian landscape are magnificent for sure but it is now being
touted as one of the great train trips of the world and is already
well booked ahead.It is for instance being compared to the
Trans-Siberian railway and the Orient Express
 I am wondering if in fact there has been any publicity at all about
this new Great Train Journey of the World in other parts of the world(
e.g USA) and so that I can compare just what are some of the other
great train trips of the world and what do they offer by way of
views/landscape,thrills and memories for the traveler.
 If you would like to see a beautiful photo of train going through
desert go to www.theage.com.au

 John From Melbourne

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Request for Question Clarification by omnivorous-ga on 04 Feb 2004 07:08 PST

John --

You may want to get a more-specific link to The Age, as that home page
link doesn't have the train photo today.

As for other coverage, use the Google News link -- you'll find 186
stories on The Ghan:
http://news.google.com/

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

G'Day John,
As it happens I recently saw coverage on BBC television news of the
inaugural run of the cost-to-coast Ghan. You may very well have seen
this coverage. If not, it can be accessed at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3449389.stm

I am not yet aware of any coverage on American television news, but I
will keep watching for it, and let you know if there should be any.
However, the Los Angeles Times newspaper seems to be very interested
in the subject, and this page will give you links to their excellent
coverage:
http://www.latimes.com/search/dispatcher.front?Query=ghan&target=article&QryTxt=&x=5&y=8

It's interesting to note that although The Ghan can now lay claim to
being the world's longest north-south train journey, it taverses less
than one-third the distance covered by the legendary Trans-Siberian,
as indicated in this chart:
http://www.theage.com.au/media/2003/09/25/1064083131649.html

May I also direct you to a commercial travel site that contains
fascinating details of many great train journeys, including the Ghan
and several others in Australia and the Reunification Express in
Vietnam:
http://www.goway.com/trainjouneys/

Finally, I thought this amazon.com page might be helpful if you would
like to acquire any books on the subject:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/104-8927391-5919153

Happy travels to you. (How, by the way, are the Footscray footballers doing?)
scribe_ga

OK Scribe I will hit you with five but only because you mentioned the
Footscray Footbal club. Are you Australian??  Seriously you did
provide some very interesting reading on all related subject matter,
e.g the views of all the journos from round the world for instance who
travelled on first trip, other great train journeys etc.