As far as I know nowadays all parcel post goes by land nowadays.
The derailment was in South Australia just west of Tarcoola.
A large majority of mail goes to and from WA by rail.
The line from Sydney to Port Augusta is notoriously bad condition so a lot of WA freight actually goes via Melbourne.
For freight leaving melbourne on the 7th it takes time to be sorted and despatched so may not get to Adelaide till the ninth.
By the tenth it was marginal if it got past Tarcoola.
trains from Melbourne to Adelaide only stack containers one high. From Adelaide to Perth they add an extra container on top . This takes two to five hours to happen. The locomotives also need refuelling and or addition of crew cars.
As I have been writing this there have been two trains go past here. One west bound, one eastbound. This is unusual here on Easter Tuesday as no loading has taken place since Thursday evening.
The other problem in the freight yards is capacity, both the length of yards for piggypackers to unload and reload trains, the number of wagons available for loading and availability of engines to pull the wagons.
A typical train doing a round trip from Melborne to Perth and return takes about 6 days. Most trains adelaide to perth are close to maximum length (1,800 metres). So a train leaving Melbourne on Monday will not get back till late Saturday Early Sunday.
leaves MelbourneMonday evening/ night. Arrives Adelaide AM tuesday, Leaves lunch time Tuesday.
arrive Perth Thursday leaves Thursday / Friday. Back to Melbourne over the weekend.
So either side of the derailment were possibly six to ten trains going in either direction. as the track is single it is a matter of threading the trains through. (just like putting liquid through a funnell.)
Out in the desert there are no unloading facilities so once a container is on a train it is stuck on the train.
The other logistical problem is availability of vehicles to carry the extra traffic. A typical double stacked container train may have two hundred containers on it. To replace it with road transport requires maybe 70 B Doubles. To replace five trains a day requires 350 rigs. That is why there will be delays for some time to come.
The other problem is the availability of containers and storage. If there is one container per day loaded for Perth it means one per day arrives back from Perth. If no trains arrive then as you keep loading containers you need to store them somewhere. And a rail yard is not designed to hold two weeks worth of containers.
So a lot of logistical problems mean maybe Ebay should consider preventing LOW DSR for those affected just like they did in the bushfires.
Unfortuneately it is now WAL wait awhile longer.
