When Australia's six colonies federated in 1901, Perth was marooned. The capital of Western Australia sat thousands of miles from every other state, reachable only by sea across the Great Australian Bight, a voyage that was slow, uncomfortable, and often rough enough to make passengers regret the journey. One of the key inducements offered to Western Australians to join the new federation was a railway connecting them to the continent's eastern states. Legislation authorizing the survey passed in 1907. The survey, completed in 1909, endorsed a route from Port Augusta -- the existing railhead at the head of Spencer Gulf -- via Tarcoola to the gold-mining center of Kalgoorlie, a distance of 1,063 miles. The line would be built to standard gauge, even though the state railway systems at both ends were narrow gauge. Construction began in September 1912, working westward from Port Augusta and eastward from Kalgoorlie simultaneously.

The construction crews pushed through country that offered almost nothing: no permanent fresh water, no timber for sleepers, no towns for supplies or labor. At peak efficiency, workers laid up to a mile of track per day, and 442 miles were completed in a single calendar year -- both Australian tracklaying records. Materials arrived by rail at the advancing railheads, carried across the very track that had been laid the day before. The two halves of the line met at Ooldea on 17 October 1917. But the desert immediately began punishing the engineers' achievement. Bore water along the route was so heavily saturated with mineral salts that it destroyed steam locomotive boilers. At one point, boiler repairs accounted for 87 percent of all locomotive maintenance. The problem was only solved with barium carbonate water treatment plants installed at watering points. In the days of steam, roughly half the total load of any train was water for the engine.

The most famous feature of the Trans-Australian Railway is the section known as the Long Straight: 478.193 kilometers without a single curve, the longest stretch of dead-straight track anywhere in the world. It runs roughly between Ooldea and Loongana across the featureless Nullarbor Plain, where the name itself -- from the Latin nullus arbor, meaning no trees -- accurately describes the landscape. At no point along the entire 1,691-kilometer route does the line cross a permanent fresh watercourse. The terrain is so flat, so dry, and so empty that the railway created its own civilization. Eight stopping places were named after Australian Prime Ministers. The Tea and Sugar supply train, which ran from the start of construction until 1996, served as a lifeline for isolated communities along the route, carrying a butcher, banking services, postal services, and vital provisions to places that had no other connection to the outside world.

For decades, the Trans-Australian Railway was a standard-gauge orphan flanked by narrow-gauge lines at both ends, forcing passengers to change trains at each state border. The journey from Sydney to Perth meant enduring multiple breaks of gauge, each requiring passengers and freight to shift to different carriages. In 1937, the eastern terminal was extended south to Port Pirie, eliminating one transfer, but the mismatch persisted until 1970, when the entire Sydney-Perth corridor was finally converted to standard gauge. The Indian Pacific service launched that year, offering the first continuous coast-to-coast train journey in Australian history. Today, the Indian Pacific runs as a weekly experiential tourism service, one of the world's great rail journeys. The Ghan also uses a section of the Trans-Australian between Port Augusta and Tarcoola before diverging north toward Darwin, a connection completed in 2004 that finally linked all mainland state capitals by standard gauge.

The railway's engineering heritage was formally recognized in 2008 when Engineers Australia installed markers at Port Augusta station and the Kalgoorlie ticket office. Centenary celebrations were held at Ooldea on 17 October 2017, exactly one hundred years after the two halves of the line met. The original engineer, Henry Deane, had envisioned diesel locomotives for the route, understanding that finding suitable water for steam engines in a desert would be an ongoing nightmare. A scandal involving the supply of sleepers forced his resignation before the idea could advance, and steam powered the line for its first three decades. Diesel-electric locomotives finally took over passenger services in 1951. Today, the Trans-Australian Railway remains the only rail freight corridor between Western Australia and the eastern states, as economically and strategically important as it was when it first stitched a reluctant federation together.