Forces beyond the railway corridor, with help from governments and the High Court, soon combined to stymie the vision so confidently trumpeted in 1962, under the slogan "The gauge is going thru in '62".

Albury's demise as a railway depot mirrors the disassembling of a transport system that once carried most of the freight and passengers around the country.

But it was a system hampered by different rail gauges, requiring passengers and their luggage to change trains at the borders and freight to be transhipped from one goods train to another.

Albury had been a busy border crossing since the NSW standard-gauge and Victorian broad-gauge tracks met in June, 1883.

It was not until April 15, 1962, that the announcement "Albury. All Change" rang out for the last time.

Six years earlier, politicians had finally managed to agree on which gauge would be adopted to link all states -- the "standard" four feet, 81/2 inches -- 1.435 metres in today's money -- and the 300 kilometres from Albury to Melbourne would be the start.

It took $30 million and 1300 workers to complete the project in late 1961.

With Brisbane and Sydney already joined, the track linked three states but it would be 33 years before Australia would see trains crossing most state borders unhindered.

The first trains to use the Sydney-Melbourne link were test trains in December 1961 and the first goods service left Sydney on January 2, 1962, but it was the new passenger services that grabbed the public's attention.

Rail was virtually the only way to travel then.

Air fares were beyond the reach of most people and even if you owned a car, the highways were narrow, winding and the journey slow.

With the completion of the standard-gauge link between Sydney and Melbourne, the railways took the opportunity introduce luxury services.

Victoria already had its Spirit of Progress; NSW produced a signature set of its own and the Southern Aurora was born.

Carriages for both trains featured airconditioning, roomy sleeping accommodation and dining cars, dressed in the blue livery for the Spirit and the stainless steel for the Southern Aurora.

Always hauled by a pair of locomotives placed back to back (reportedly on the orders of then NSW Railways Commissioner Neal McCusker) each Aurora included 14 carriages of which 10 were sleeping berths holding 198 passengers. It left each capital at 8pm, arriving at its destination 13 hours later.

As a true intercapital service, it stopped only at Goulburn and Albury to change crews. At Albury, the locomotives were also changed, a practice that continued until 1983 when a single locomotive began hauling the 655-tonne train all the way.

With passengers and freight no longer having to change trains, Albury lost its significance as a border crossing and with no need of a locomotive servicing depot after 1983, the decline of the Albury rail yard was accelerated.

The Southern Aurora was inaugurated on April 12, 1962, when the Governor-General Viscount De L'Isle revealed the name.

It would become known to railwaymen as the Aurora -- and to others as the "Roarer".

At 10.45pm, the first train left Sydney's Central Station carrying Prime Minister Robert Menzies, NSW Premier Bob Heffron, Victorian Premier Henry Bolte and assorted other politicians and officials.

Ten minutes later, a second Aurora left with 200 passengers, mainly from the media, taking a "short cut" through Sydney to get ahead of the official train so the photographers and television and newsreel cameramen could be on the platform at Albury the next morning to record the historic arrival 23 minutes later -- and eight minutes behind time.

But, as The Border Morning Mail reported at the time, they and local officials and politicians were the only ones on the platform after the public was banned -- and the crowds had to witness the historic event either from the street or the overhead bridge at the northern end of the platform.

About 8.30am, the official train crossed the river to Wodonga, picking up more dignitaries and breaking through a garland of waratah and pink heath -- the floral emblems of each state -- at the point where the new standard-gauge track to Melbourne began.

At the controls for the run to Melbourne was former Wodonga driver Cyril Kettle. Wodonga's Harry Binder was in charge of the media train.

In Melbourne, some of the new Aurora and Spirit of Progress carriages were opened for display but former NSW railway administrator Col Gilbertson, a lad of 12 in 1962, wrote in the Australian Railway Historical Society's magazine this month that NSW did not allow the public a peek inside the carriages that returned from Melbourne and 20,000 people were turned away.

There was strong demand for the new services, especially the Intercapital Daylight which left Sydney at 7.45am and Melbourne at 8.40am.

During Easter and Christmas holidays, extra trains, known as "relief" expresses, handled the crowds.

It was not unusual for Albury to see two Southern Auroras only 30 minutes apart.

Having taken the first step towards linking the entire nation with a single gauge and spending considerable sums upgrading passenger services for the first time in many years, rail was enjoying halcyon days.

But they were not to last -- a High Court challenge several years earlier eventually ended the railways' virtual monopoly, both on passenger services and, more importantly, the much more lucrative freight.

Governments turned their attention and their budgets to roads.

There were a lot of votes behind the wheel because more people could afford cars and commerce demanded more efficient movement of its products.

The trucking industry began to boom and today rail carries less than 10 per cent of the nation's freight.

Trains may be good at hauling coal and wheat but can't compete with the door-to-door flexibility or cost of the modern truck.

As the highways improved, passengers moved to coaches which were faster and more frequent.

And then the airlines came into play as competition and more efficient planes drove down fares.

In the latest Railway Digest of the Australian Railway Historical Society, former editor Ken Date points out that the completion of the new line to Melbourne coincided with Australia's entry into the jet age and business executives could now commute between Sydney and Melbourne in a single day, so much so that the air route became one of the busiest in the world.

Mr Date said there was a resurgence in rail freight between the cities immediately after the standard-gauge link was completed, but the railways started to lose its share once the upgrade of the Hume Highway began in earnest in the 1970s.

The advent of B-doubles has not helped, nor have government policies that have favoured road over rail and still are -- rail operators will have to pay the carbon tax from day one, while road transport gets a year's grace.

Only a handful of freight trains a day now use the railway between Sydney and Melbourne and only three of them originate in Sydney.

Mr Date says the authorities cannot afford to wait for rising oil prices and environmental benefits to make railways more attractive but must improve efficiencies and costs so the standard-gauge railway can meet its expectations, albeit 50 years late.

The end for the Southern Aurora came in 1986 when it and the Spirit of Progress were merged, the overnight expresses running for the last time, 10 minutes apart, on Sunday, August 3, although Col Gilbertson notes that over the next two years, the separate trains were sometimes resurrected on long weekends and school holidays to meet demand.

Their replacement reverted to pre-standard gauge names, the Sydney Express and the Melbourne Express.

After the Intercapital Daylight was withdrawn in 1991, they continued to struggle on to November 1993 when Countrylink introduced the XPT and the last of the locomotive-hauled Sydney-Melbourne expresses followed their counterparts the Brisbane Limited and Gold Coast Motorail into history.

Today, the Southern Aurora lives on as a tour train, operated by the NSW Rail Transport Museum under the Heritage Express brand. It will visit Albury on Tuesday to commemorate the 50th anniversary and, again, on another extensive tour in May.

The Australian Railway Historical Society's Canberra division has some Aurora carriages in its collection while others are in private ownership.

This article also sourced information from the Australian Railway Historical Society, Col Gilbertson and Ken Date, whose co-operation is acknowledged.