From colonial times, Australians and New Zealanders have used railway construction to alter not only their economies and polities but also their environments. Although the consequences of large infrastructure projects are vast, they are often understood poorly. 2021 NLA Fellow, Dr André Brett uses the development of railway networks to interrogate the strong and enduring linkages between economic growth and environmental change. His research seeks to redefine our understanding of how railways affected Australasian landscapes, offering a critical perspective on the outcomes of economic growth and resource use. Australasian literature has interrogated how settlers understood nature, how labourers extracted resources, and which producers used these commodities; it is now time to turn to the crucial transportation stage that links extraction to use. Railways were not simply a means of overcoming what Geoffrey Blainey famously dubbed the tyranny of distance; they were agents of change that remade every landscape through which they ran. By extending our understanding of transport’s dynamic role in settler colonialism, he will expose the tensions between economic growth and environmental change and how these intersect in large nation-building railway projects.