Great Western - 16. GW Chap 16

“Ashburton Engineering, steps up!” was the headlines, and Dad and I continued to read the story. “Ashburton Engineering, has stepped up its services in Western Australia, with the Albany to Geraldton, proving to be very popular, and with a new service beginning today, from Leonora in the Goldfields to Esperance on the South East coast, and vice versa.

Ashburton Engineering also took over control of the Prospector services, as of today, and timetables have been made to allow for connections between the three services, allowing people to travel to large parts of the southern half of the state”.

“Well that is a good bit of free publicity, hopefully it will continue that way” Dad said to me. Over the next few days, we monitored the media very closely, and every evening, we received a report from the senior Porter for each train, of which all was positive feedback.

As I came downstairs just before dinner, a few days later, I saw dad talking to someone on his mobile, so I went to the kitchen to see what Mrs Frazier had prepared for us. “Out of my kitchen Master Vern, I have already had to shoo away your two brothers” Mrs Frazier said to me, so I headed back into the lounge room, just as Dad ended the call.

“Anything interesting?” I enquired, “Your former school wants to settle out of court for $5,000, but I said that we would accept no less than $45,000 and an official apology, which they said they would consider and get back to us.” Dad informed me.

By the end of the first week of all three services operating, we had an average of 95% bookings for each service, and both Dad and I were very pleased with everything, especially with the connecting train services, having a dramatic increase in passenger numbers on the Prospector.

The name change, from Ashburton Engineering to ARG – Ashburton Rail Group, when ahead without any fanfare, and as the weeks and months passed all the services continued to do well, with an interesting side affect to another transport service, with passenger numbers on flights to and from Albany and Geraldton to Perth reducing by a large amount.

When work on the rail line from Leonora to Leinster was about to be started, we were shocked to learn that the mining company had decided to deferred the project. to a time when it will be more profitable for the company.

Dad was furious with this news, and I was getting very worried, that this could cause some problems, and at dinner time, no one was very talkative. When my brothers finally went to bed, Dad, Mum and I sat at the kitchen table to discuss what options we have to recover from this problem.

“What bout we go back to the original plan, of connecting Leonora to Mullewa, so we have a journey from Albany to Geraldton and Geraldton to Esperance, via Kalgoorlie” I suggested, after a very long period of silence. “That would be good son, but without financial support we can’t do it, and no way am I going to get this family into heavy debt” Dad responded.

“If we change the shares, so Dad and I have 25% each, Vern, you have 10% and the boys stay at 5% each, that would give us 30% shares that we can offer to the Swiss Rail company, for the price of say, 8 million Francs, which includes a small discount, to what they paid before” Mum suggested, and Dad smiled.

“Ok, let’s give that a go, and no doubt, they will want to have some checks and balances put into place, to make sure the company is running properly” Dad said. Within a month, the deal was done, with the Swiss Rail company now owning 30% shares in the company, and a representative on the Board of Directors, we had over $11 million Australian in the bank, which would be enough to fund the laying of rail track from Leonora to Mullewa, with a lot of the track preparation already completed.

We decided to call the whole journey the Great Western, since the train will be leaving from Albany and arriving in Esperance, via Geraldton and Kalgoorlie. Including the new trains recently arrived, there would be three return journeys each week.

Two trains would do the Albany to Geraldton return journey, while the other two will do the Geraldton to Esperance return journey, with the Swiss company sending another two more gold class cars, so each train will have the same number of cars and classes.

But before we could even start planning, the Swiss director – Franz, announced that he had some discussions with head office in Switzerland, and they have come up with an alternative suggestion, which we had never considered.

It was proposed that with the money were paid had for the shares in ARG, plus an equal amount of money put in by the Swiss Rail company, we could build a rail line from the Malcolm rail siding, just East of Leonora, following the Leonora Laverton Road and Great Central Road, for 875 kilometres, to as far as Warakuna Community.

From there, turning North on the Sandy Blight Junction Road, which is really just a track, through the Gibson Desert, for 284 kilometres to the WA / NT border, where the road or track is known as the Kintore WA Border Road, from there, heading in a rough North East direction, on the Tanami Desert, for 164 kilometres, before turning onto another access track for 107 kilometres to just before the Community of Nyirrupi, and turning North for 53 kilometres.

From there, the track will follow another track heading North for 143 kilometres, till turning onto another track for 30 kilometres, till it reaches the Tanami Road, which is a well-maintained gravel road, at the locality of Chilla Well. From there the track will continue North East on the Mt Theo Station access road for 40 kilometres, till about 10 kilometres before the homestead.

The track will continue to the North East, for 260 kilometres to the final access track, for 130 kilometres, till it connects to the existing Adelaide to Darwin rail line, just 1.5 kilometres South of the Tennant Creek Railway station.

In total, from Kalgoorlie to Tennant Creek there will be a distance of 2086 kilometres, of which 928 kilometres will be in the Northern Territory, with another 264 kilometres from Kalgoorlie, the whole journey will be 2350 kilometres long, which is just 330 kilometres shorter than the Ghan Journey from Adelaide to Darwin.

Dad, Mum and I sat in the conference room of the office, like stunned mullets, it would be a huge job, and it would take about 18 months to complete the job, and I was sure that it would cost a lot more than $22 million dollars. Dad must have reading my mind, as that was the first question he asked.

“I am glad you asked. The Swiss company wants to do a partnership deal with the rail line, where we will be inputting 22 million Australian, as part of the ARG partnership, a 4-man team has already been established, to deal with the planning and preparations for the project, and will arrive in Perth in a months’ time.

They have already begun negotiations with the WA State and Federal governments, requesting input into the cost of building the rail line, with a suggested amount of $365 million Australian each, and from the Northern Territory Government, $248 million, plus Swiss Rail will add a further $350 million, which makes it a total of $1.35 billion dollars, to build the line” Franz announced, in very good English.

“Wow, that is an awful lot of zero’s in all that” I commented, and Dad chuckled at my comment. “Yes, indeed there are, son” Dad said. “So, how does it all work out, with ownership?” I asked, “Good question, Master Vern, Swiss Rail will have a controlling share of the partnership, with the support of ARG’s $22 million, with the Federal Government and WA State Government having the next highest shares, and the NT Government having the least number of shares.

ARG will have ownership control of the rail line, from Malcolm Siding near Leonora, all the way to where the rail lines join just South of Tennant Creek. There are quite a large number of mining operations along where the line will be, and I am sure that they will request a spur line to be built and access to the rail line, which will assist with recovering the costs of construction.

I understand, that you have already started acquiring shares in two rail freight companies, to have a better say with the use of the rail lines, so Swiss Rail may be able to assist with that. With the extra staff arriving soon, we will need to secure accommodation for the four men, who are all single, and are just average with their English Language, and I suggest that we get a bigger Office building to work from” Franz said.

“Well in that case, the house next door to this office is currently for sale, and if we are going to move to bigger office space, we can use this house as well, to accommodate the four men. Are you happy in the house you are currently in?” Dad said, directing his comments to Franz.

“Yes, I am very happy in the little stone cottage, near the top of Grey Street East, with a nice 7 block walk to the office” Franz said in reply. “Good, we will go ahead with buying the house at number 25, and I will start looking at possible sites for a new administration base for ARG, and I have a good idea on one place in particular” Dad said.

Within three quick weeks, Dad had purchased the old Bank building, on the corner of the main street and Grey Street West, directly opposite the town hall, as well as the adjoining building, which had two long tern tenants in it. Thankfully the settlement was very quick, and Dad had already organised for the whole building to be refurbished, inside and out.

The attached overhang, on the front and side of the building would be totally removed, as well as the large billboard on the wall, and the outside wall would be rendered, with a light green / grey colour. Once all the power, the roof, air-conditioning and plumbing have been checked and fixed, inside the building all of the carpets would be ripped up.

The three separate office suites at the very back, would have the walls painted, and new internal walls installed, with all the required light fittings, plus all the power, telephone and internet sockets, ready to be leased out.

The main bank building, will have a large reception foyer, with tasteful furniture and art work, beyond that, there will be the reception desk and two administration offices, a small meeting room, a conference room, a staff room and bathroom. Through a door and upstairs, there will be the two large front offices, a large meeting room, plus a bathroom.

Every office, will have the best furniture in it, along with original paintings and hard-wearing plush carpets, as will the meeting and conference rooms. Dad, Franz and I discussed and decided that, Dad and I would share an upstairs office.

Franz as the Project Manager, would have the other upstairs office, and the two offices and the meeting room down stairs, would be shared by the other four staff.

We had decided that when all the renovations and refurbishment are completed, and we have settled into our new office building, we would not advertise in anyway what the building is used for now, and that the front door would remain locked during office hours, with a door bell and a small sign – “Press for Service” to one side, and we would enter and exit the building from the side entrance, each day.

With the adjoining building, Dad was negotiating with the tenants, a hairdresser and a real estate agency, to have them relocate to the newly refurbished office suites on the side street, so that we can knock down the back half of that building, to make it into one large office suite, and to allow for more private parking space.

When completed, one tenant will be returning to the front building, while the other will remain in the side building, with a larger area available to them, and Dad offered both tenants, a 15% reduction in their rent during the renovation period, and no raise in rent for a period of two years.

The 15-metre wide and 40-metre long building will be reduced to 20 metres long, allowing for a 40 x 15 metre parking area at the back of the building, so now there will be 20 parking bays instead of just 11 parking bays, meaning each tenant would have 5 parking bays each available to them.

Renovations were only half way through when the four new staff arrived in Perth, and so to allow for some extra time, Dad treated them to a week’s holiday on Rottnest Island, plus a few days either side of that time, giving us two weeks to get the new office building and the two houses ready for the new staff.

It was unfortunate, that just a month after our new staff had arrived and settled into their new homes and jobs, that we received news from the Federal, NT and WA governments, that they would not be putting any partial funding into such a large project, so we were now back to the drawing board.