Australia’s most epic train journey just got longer

One of the world’s longest train journeys, which includes the longest straight stretch of railway track on Earth, has just become even longer.

The itinerary of the epic 4352-kilometre Indian Pacific rail odyssey, which unites the continent’s eastern and western seaboards from Perth to Sydney, has been extended to five days and four nights or from 65 hours to 90 hours.

On the rails … an already epic trip extended.Credit:

No-one is complaining, mind you, least of all paying passengers, since the decision was influenced by their collective desire to spend even more time on and off the iconic train once immortalised in an eponymous ditty by country crooner Slim Dusty. The length of its physical locomotive and carriages can extend to almost a kilometre.

Travelling on the Indian Pacific, which was privatised by the federal government in 1997, is certainly a far cry from the days when it was publicly owned. Back then, it operated as a loss-making long-distance rail transport service rather than a luxury transcontinental “rail cruise” as today.

Back in those checkered government-run days, the train often ran so late that passengers, especially those in the notorious “sit-up” carriages, couldn’t wait to get off. Now the opposite is the case.

The latest all-inclusive “off-train experiences” of the extended IP (as it’s affectionately known) now include stops at: Kalgoorlie, Western Australia; Cook (a remote South Australian railway settlement on the Nullarbor); the Barossa Valley, also in South Australia; and Broken Hill and the Blue Mountains, in NSW.

Gold Premium dining car.Credit:

One of the highlights of the train’s visit to Kalgoorlie is a stop at the open-cut Super Pit, one of Australia’s largest gold mines. Journey Beyond, operators of the Indian Pacific, hope the leisurely off-train pause at a legendary winery in the Barossa Valley will be pure gold too.

“What is set to become a signature experience is the exclusive dinner for guests at Seppeltsfield Estate, showcasing the flavours and wines of the region,” says Indian Pacific general manager Alberto Isaza.

All in all, all of that additional time on and off the train may allow passengers to reflect on the fact that the Indian Pacific, along with its sister train, The Ghan, represents one of the few long-distance rail expeditions in the world to genuinely span a continent; that is, in a single journey aboard the one train.

In both the United States and Canada, the long and the short of it is that two trains are required to connect similarly sized coasts aboard similarly comfortable tourist trains. See journeybeyondrail.com.au

THE INDIAN PACIFIC IN NUMBERS

879 Average length in metres of train (including two locomotives and 35 carriages)

1710 Average weight in tonnes

478 Length in kilometres of “The Long Straight” across the Nullarbor Plain

85 Average speed in kilometres an hour

115 Maximum speed in kilometres an hour

65 Duration in hours between Sydney and Perth