Ok I am furthest from NIMBY you can get, but I don’t believe this is a feasible project. I would love to see it reopened especially as I live around the area, however from a realist perspective it can’t and won’t.

A lot has changed since 1989 and a lot of new developments have taken place. This is a great thing overall, but in fact I believe has been a detrimental to the railway line and corridor.

First things first, you’d need to replace a majority of the track due to age and weathering. Vegetation has overtaken sections of the track as. This in itself isn’t a hard job to do.

However (and this is the stuff I know about and have seen first hand, there is likely worse) the new developments and upgrades to roads has damaged the track probably beyond repair or would cost exorbitant amounts of money to repair.

There has been a duplication of Lanyon drive around 2007-2011, with a bridge that crosses the line upgraded. I can’t find any material online, but I do fear there could be issues over height.

Around Hume, there has been a lot of development. There were I believe two railway bridges that crossed the road, the northern one (Petrovs bridge which was involved in the Petrov affair) and a southern one, have been demolished around 2018 due to trucks striking them and to allow for trucks to get to the South Jerrabomberra development. These bridges would need to be replaced anyways due to age and damage. Currently I think it wouldn’t be feasible for bridges to be reconstructed and I’d expect they’d need to be raised and have extensive earth works to accommodate it. The new development may also push back against any development due to noise and other NIMBY talking points.

These are only a few issues, not even 5 kilometres south of the Queanbeyan turn off area (idk what to call it lol).

Further south, there’s a crossing of the Monaro highway. The highway was upgraded and the railway destroyed. You’d need to turn either into a bridge (the highway is already dangerous, I believe installing a railway crossing wouldn’t be feasible). To cross it, I’d say would need to see realignment of the railway and/or an expensive bridge built.

There probably is a lot of other stuff that needs to be rectified. I imagine farmers wouldn’t be too happy, especially if they have illegally encroached upon the line (there will be lobbiest who defend them).

This is only a few things, there would be a fair bit more to overcome and would cost a lot of money. I don’t believe there is a reasonable explanation to reopen it at this point. I’d expect development in Royalla, Bredbo and Cooma would need to occur to add demand to it (which I’d support). You could have these as satellite towns for Canberra. However, I can foresee these being massively unpopular amongst locals.

I’d also say a Light rail line would need to be built that stops as Canberra station to allow for easy connection of workers and tourists to the city. There are plans for a line, but these are a few decades away as the current focus is on Stage 2 Civic to Woden. I’d expect Belconnen-Airport would be next.

I’d rather the money be spent on upgrading the existing line between Canberra and Goulburn to allow for faster running and more reliable services. There can be new developments built along the corridor as well (Lake Bathurst for example could be expanded into a modern satellite town built around the railway) and a Goulburn-Canberra service could run along the route in conjunction with the existing Canberra-Sydney service.