The advice I was given is "nothing will be running south of Brighton", but I remain sceptical about that as I too have heard nothing about Boyer either closing or switching to road freight. Mind you, there is precedent for doing a short road haul to a main line yard, as the Risdon traffic has gone that way rather than maintaining the short branch.
I saw one Bell Bay train departing East Tamar when I was there in Feb. I believe it remains "as required".
For now, the main traffic remains Fingal to Railton coalies, Railton to Devonport cement, and the Melba line ore traffic. Plus a bit of containerised freight.
On the Melba line, new mining developments are leading to quite a bit of capital works. Specifically:
- Upgrade of Ridgley crossing loop with new points.
- New crossing loop and infrastructure siding at Guildford (former junction for EBR Waratah branch)
- New infrastructure siding at Que
- Upgrade and lengthing of Boco loop with new points.
- New loop at Bastyan (operated as a holding yard for up - empty - trains).
This will allow the traffic on the Melba line to increase from the current ~4 trains per day to as many as 10.
The Hellyer line remains disconnected at Moory Jct, but there are proposals that would see it reactivated. The line remains maintained & free of vegetation, so it would be relatively simple to reconnect.
There is talk of export coal from the Fingal line starting up, which would lead to a 10MTPA traffic off the Fingal line to a port (Bell Bay I presume), i.e. a similar level of coal traffic to that running via the Port of Brisbane. If that happens it will be a game changer for rail in Tasmania.