Oh, don't worry. It really is ridiculous. We actually used to have a gigantic rail system here (Victoria's network at its peak used to look like this, and the rest of Australia had similarly large networks). Over time and as cars and trucks became more viable, we did what the Americans did and began to axe more and more of our train lines. I'm not particularly well versed in the history of freight trains and trains outside of Vic, but I'd guess it's a similar thing to what happened to our passenger network. With a bit of money quietly slipped into the pockets of pollies, they began to commission heavily biased reports from people with vested interested in getting more cars on the roads to "justify" axing them.

Of course it's a little more complicated than that, but at the end of the day, when it comes to why private industries do/don't do things, it usually comes down to either finances or perception. At some point in time, it's become more financially viable to have things trucked rather than sending it even in part by rail, and the governments concerned never took drastic enough action to remedy it, so trains went bye bye.

(Also the fact mail often goes by plane now, and we outsourced most of our manufacturing and industry to other countries does not help)

It's money. It's always money. If it were cheaper to ship stuff by rail than by truck, businesses everywhere would ship by rail.

There would be a point where rail is cheaper. I suspect it's at the point where you have a whole container. I only say this because while moving interstate (twice), I had a container of furniture and boxes that went by rail.

It's more the fact that you need to double handle containers, at the destination city, to get them on to a truck to the final destination. Which impacts the viability for shorter routes.

Melbourne / Sydney to Perth Freight is about 90% by rail or sea. Mainly because the longer distances make up for the extra costs incurred with double handling.