The Ghan Katherine and Darwin; the stops at Alice Springs and Katherine allow time for passengers to take optional tours. Each train has 16 to 38 stainless steel carriages, built by Comeng, Granville, in the late 1960s / early 1970s for the "Indian Pacific", plus a motorail wagon. A Pacific National NR class locomotive, plus a second locomotive if necessary, usually hauls the train, but occasionally other engines assist, such as an AN class or a DL class locomotive. Starting in August 1929, "The Ghan" ran on the Central Australian Railway, originally built as a narrow-gauge railway to Alice Springs. In 1957,
The Ghan contrary view is that the name was a veiled insult. In 1891, the railway from Quorn reached remote Oodnadatta where an itinerant population of around 150 cameleers were based, generically called "Afghans". "The Ghan Express" name originated with train crews in the 1890s as a taunt to officialdom because, when an expensive sleeping car was put on from Quorn to Oodnadatta, "on the first return journey the only passenger was an Afghan", mocking its commercial viability. By as early as 1924, because of the notorious unreliability of this fortnightly steam train, European pastoralists commonly called it "in ribald fashion The