Photos

The station at Alice - there's no platform. This train runs twice a week in both directions. People who travel on it are impressed by the vastness, emptiness and isolation of the country it crosses. The landscape is dominated by red earth, mulga (a shrubby acacia) and spinnefex (a spiky sliver grass that grows in clumps).

(from the trusty wikipedia)
The Ghan is the 48hour, 2,979km passenger train operating on the Adelaide-Alice Springs-Darwin Central Australian Railway in Australia. The service's name is an abbreviated version of its previous nickname The Afghan Express, which comes from the Afghan camel trains that trekked the same route before the advent of the railway.
Original construction was by South Australian Railways as a 3ft 6in (1067mm) narrow gauge railway.
January 18, 1878: From the south: Construction from Port Augusta starts
August 6, 1929: Alice Springs reached, the Ghan starts running under current name; the northern and southern parts are not connected.
The tortuously curving line was notoriously prone to delays, often caused by flash floods washing away bridges and tracks. A decision was thus made to rebuild the entire line with a straighter alignment some 150 km west of the existing track, this time using standard gauge.
February 4, 2004: First passenger train reaches Darwin