A Journey Onboard the Newcastle Light Railway.

This is a video of the complete journey onboard the Newcastle light railway. The journey travels eastbound from Newcastle Interchange to Newcastle Beach.

The Newcastle light railway is a 2.7 km long single route running from Newcastle Interchange to Newcastle Beach through the centre of Newcastle. The route runs along a former railway corridor and then along Hunter and Scott Streets. The light railway uses six CAF Urbos 100 supercapacitor trams. A journey on the Newcastle light railway takes less than 11 minutes from end to end making it the shortest modern light railway in Australia.

As the entire light railway route is overhead wire free and does not use any third rail systems for power. Thus the only recharging points are above the light rail stops along the route. It takes about 30 to 40 seconds to recharge the trams while at the light rail stops. This is about double the required time for passengers to get on and off the trams. Thus the trams seem to sit for an extended time at each stop. In the case of significant delays or a power failure it is said the trams do have enough power to fully complete the route without needing to recharge. Thus allowing passengers to get off at the nearest stop in the case of a failure.

However the existence of the Newcastle light railway is extremely controversial as it was built to allow the closure of the busy and already electrified Newcastle Railway that links Sydney with Newcastle. The section between the former Wickham Railway Station and the historic Newcastle Railway Station was closed in 2014. The modern Newcastle Interchange is located on the site of the former Wickham Railway Station today.

The removal of the former railway has more than doubled passenger journey times over the now closed section of the route. It has been speculated that the closure of the line was to allow significant property redevelopment in central Newcastle. However due to local opposition much of this redevelopment never occurred and today much of that former railway land is now public open space instead.

As of 2023 there are no future plans to expand the Newcastle light railway and thus it is has become an orphan line and not part of a wider Newcastle transport network.

Newcastle is a major regional city with a population of about 350,000 people and is located 162km north of Sydney New South Wales. The city is famous for beautiful surf beaches and a relaxed lifestyle. It is also home to Australia's largest coal export terminal that transports around 140 million tonnes of coal annually. The mining industry is what drives Newcastle's economy today. However tourism is a growth sector for the entire newcastle and hunter valley region with increasing tourist interest in recent years this hopefully will reduce reliance on the mining industry in the future.

The footage in this video was produced in 2023.
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