2017 Main South Revisited Pt 1 covered action on the Main South Line in 2017 between Sydney and Goulburn. 2017 Main South Revisited Pt 2 covers equivalent action between Goulburn and Albury Wodonga.
2017 has seen QUBE increase its influence on the Main South. QUBE has opened an intermodal facility at Harefield just south of Junee. It stores and marshalls its empty intermodal wagons at Junee yard and operates out of Harefield siding which more or less equates to Pacific National’s Boman facility. Also entering the interstate haulage competition is SCT, primarily with covered wagons. However in December 2017 Aurizon will withdraw completely from interstate intermodal operations because of fierce competition resulting in heavy ongoing financial losses. Both PacNat and GrainCorp have now established Cootamundra as the centre for their grain operations. A new maintenance facility has been opened in the loco depot there. PacNat still dominates steel haulage on the Main South.
Albury Wodonga has seen the introduction of new liveries for the VLine PT passenger services with revised operating procedures at the Albury terminus. There are rumours that VLine would like to operate passenger services through to Wagga Wagga and/or Junee but has not yet received approval to do so.
Locomotives seen in action in this presentation include AN, C, CM, G, LDP, MZ, N, NR, QBX, SCT, VL, 44, 48, 81 and 93 Class (and several minutes of some of the last stream movements of ARHS/Canberra’s Garratt 6029 before the museum folded due to financial problems) whilst passenger traffic includes XPT, Endeavour and VLine traffic.
Approximate run time: 105 minutes.