...it is starting to seem that you have this fixation / obsession that standard gauge is the only rail gauge worthy of usage and don't seem to understand that QLD quite successfully hauls huge tonnages, including coal traffic, over 1067mm gauge tracks. I know down in Victoria it was worth converting the Albury line to standard gauge in the early 1960s and the line to Adelaide in the 1990s, but that was to allow through traffic. On the other hand, the same notion of through interstate traffic is not needed here in QLD, as through traffic generally travels via containers which are relatively cheaply swapped between rail gauges as needed. Time to move on and understand real world economic and engineering factors.Okay, if building a new system or line that doesn't need to be interoperable with these existing lines, the chances are that standard gauge would be used, even though Queensland and Western Australia have quite successfully hauled a lot on a narrower gauge.
Where else is any narrower gauge worthy of usage but on existing narrow-gauge networks?