Northern River Railroad (NRR) was established back in 1990 with the intention of running a tourist train on the Casino to Murwillumbah line using reconditioned state railway equipment. This service commenced in 1999 as the Ritz Rail tourist train, but prior to that, in 1997 NRR subcontracted to FreightCorp for haulage of flyash on the Murwillumbah line.
In 2002 NRR was purchased by Queensland Rail (QR) and rebranded as Interail, thereby giving QR the opportunity to operate beyond Queensland state borders. Interail then started operating rail infrastructure trains in Northern NSW. In 2003 it started hauling coal for the Duralli Colliery and then containers between Brisbane-Sydney-Melbourne intermodal services with leased rail equipment.
In parallel with all this activity QR decided to bring its coal, bulk and containerised business units under one new banner, this being QR National (QRN). Included under QRN were other subsidiaries such as Interail and the CRT Transport Group. In 2006 QRN acquired Australian Railroad Group (ARG) which had rail operations in NSW, SA and WA states, however ARG remained a separate subsidiary until it too was rebranded QRN in 2011.
In December 2012, QRN was rebranded as Qurizon and is a publicly listed rail freight company on the Australian Stock Exchange. However its life at the top has been difficult. While its coal haulage in NSW and Queensland has been its saving grace, it has faced fierce competition and severe losses on the intermodal front, and completely pulled out of intermodal traffic in late 2017.
This presentation covers Aurizon’s and its forebear’s intermodal operations right up to cessation of operations. Locomotives seen in action include CLF, CLP, DC, EL, G, LDP, S, LZ, X, 22, 44, 82, 421, 422, 423, 2800, 3200, 6000 and 6020 Classes.
Approximate run time: 154 minutes.