Talk:BHP Whyalla Tramway

Change of article name

I propose that the name of the article be changed to "Middleback Range–Whyalla railway line".

Reasons:

• The time has long since passed since BHP sold its Middleback/Whyalla operations.
• The rate at which company names have changed in recent years – OneSteel, Arrium, BlueScope, BlueSteel, GFG Alliance – and the likelihood of that continuing calls for a title that doesn't include the company name.
• It is decades since the line was named a "tramway", a name that originated at its beginning, when the track was very light (NB: not because of a South Australian Act that mandated the term for non-government railways; it never existed). Neither the lightweight engineering nor the tramway nomenclature lasted more than 20 years. It is rightly termed (and is in the rail industry) a heavy-haul line.
• A descriptor that is purely geographic and corrects the tramway/railway anomaly would be achieved with Middleback Range–Whyalla railway line.

I would create a redirect page for the present article name to go to the new one. Comments, anyone? Cheers, Simon – SCHolar44 🇦🇺 💬 at 13:08, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

What do more recent sources usually call it? Fork99 (talk) 23:25, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Hello Fork99,

Currently, the line's operator states:

• "For access to the railway network and infrastructure in South Australia (excluding the Tarcoola to Darwin, ARTC main lines, the GFG Whyalla railway network and infrastructure) ..." (https://aurizon.com.au/what-we-do/network/the-south-australia-and-northern-territory-network).

Current authoritative network diagrams use these terms:

• on page 2 table, line 17: Arrium ore line
• on page after 942: SIMEC ore line (https://www.sa-trackandsignal.net/Pdf_Line_Sets/CRN_SANT.pdf).

These three examples also illustrate the problem of transitory terminology based on trading/company names. The first shows the current owner's operating name before it re-branded itself as InfraBuild; the other two are previous company names (for the timeline of the companies see https://www.infrabuild.com/about/our-history/ – 4 name changes since 2000). Hence the advantage of not including the company name in the article title.

The origin of the term "tramway" appears to be an erroneous statement by an established railway commentator, G.H. Fearnside, circa 1950, that an Act of the South Australian Parliament mandated the terminology. This has been repeated over the years by a number of writers, none of whom appears to have checked the Act (https://www.legislation.sa.gov.au/__legislation/lz/c/a/general%20tramways%20act%201884/current/1884.309.auth.pdf), which in fact makes no such mention.

An example of this is in Peter Knife's book of 2013, Peninsula Pioneer Revisited, which states at page 346:

The South Australian General Tramways Act of 1884 in effect provided that only the Government could operate "railways" in the state; private rail lines were classified as "tramways".

Knife goes on to say:

BHP's railways in South Australia have as a consequence always been referred to as tramways, a misnomer as they were heavy haul lines running trains every bit as heavy as the government railways, and in most cases heavier. At Port Lincoln in the 1960s the disparity between title and reality was greatest: the government "railway" was operating steam-hauled trains of four-wheeled wagons with a 12-ton axle load on light narrow gauge track, within sight of BHP's Coffin Bay "tramway" where rakes of large bogie hoppers with a 25-ton axle load were diesel-hauled on heavy roadbed which was better than any then existing in the state.

I probably should clarify that when I said, above, "It is decades since the line was named a 'tramway', a name that originated at its beginning", I was talking about the decade 1900–1910.

At present there is also an article (of 90 words) titled Whyalla railway line. That name can be confusing because it could be referring to the line we're discussing or the lines within Whyalla. To reduce ambiguity I will be proposing likewise that it be named Port Augusta–Whyalla railway line, as in the Act that authorised it (https://www.legislation.gov.au/Latest/C1970A00023). Cheers, Simon – SCHolar44 🇦🇺 💬 at 01:20, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

Oppose, as proposed. Multiple reliable sources state it is a tramway. Would be supportive of a simplified Whyalla Tramway. Any confusion between this and the Whyalla railway line article can be addressed by adding hatnotes. Temelalla (talk) 22:23, 21 March 2024 (UTC)