Old Ghan Rail Line ...... track condition

Gday,

The Finke Desert race is early June so that section will be chewed up for sure!

Cheers

I drove over that road last year one week after the race. It was very heavily corrugated but I doubt if one race could do that to it. We spent most of the time on the service road beside it and thoroughly enjoyed it. It had lots of twists and turns and a few sections that looked like a long series of erosion ditches like you see on mountain tracks except there were dozens of them one after the other. The car was continually pointing at the sky then down again then straight up without a break. This sounds terrible but the surface was smooth with no corrugations so we stayed on it thinking it was great fun.

How you handle the corrugations is up to you. My wife and I had no time limits so we rarely exceeded 30 to 40 kph and had no trouble at all.. The car had standard springs and shocks and everything, including the camper on the back, came through without a scratch.

The road is quite sandy, so be prepared for extra fuel usage. It's quite a good road, I drive it at around 75 kmh to conserve fuel, any slower & the corrugations will start to annoy you. Some drive it considerably faster.

At 75 kmh towing a camper trailer my Navara uses around 22L per 100km of diesel on that road, compared to 8-9L per 100km on the bitumen!

My tires always stay at 20PSI on the front, 26PSI on the rear & 20PSI on the trailer on gravel roads - I've never even had a flat since I started doing that & the ride is much nicer - we've been on some very ordinary roads lol!

Watch out for the "dog spikes" along the road! There are 1,000's of them. When they removed the rail line, they left the spikes holding the track to the sleepers on the road. They're fine to drive over when laying flat, but may cause you issues if you run over one that's sticking up.

Don't worry about the race, they don't race on the road, they race just off the road. They cross the road occasionally, but don't cause too much damage. Some will say that the support vehicles damage the road, but I've yet to see it. Tourists in jacked up 4WD's driving like nut cases do more damage lol!

Enjoy your trip!

Kevin.

Thanks for the detailed replies ..... sounds like a great trip. Havent driven along there for over 20 years.