National Rail Corporation (NR) was formed in 1992 when the Federal, New South Wales and the Victorian governments decided to form a corporation to more efficiently run interstate rail services. Effectively from April 1993 it took over the interstate networks between Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Alice Springs and Perth.
NR commenced operation with a mixed fleet of locomotives and rolling stock from Freight Corp, Australian National, Silverton and VLine (including AN, BL, C, DL, EL, G, X, 442, 80, 81 and 82) and in 1995 placed the largest single Australian order for new locomotives, namely for one hundred and twenty NR Class 3000KW/4020HP Model Cv40-9i, with A. Goninan & Co, the Australian GE licensee, NR1-NR60 being built at Broadmeadow NSW and NR61-NR120 built concurrently at Bassendean WA. With all 120 locomotives delivered, all loan locomotives, other than the AN, BL, DL, and 13 of the 81 Class, were returned to their respective operators.
Whilst instigated as an ‘interstate’ operator, NR has diversified to include ‘intrastate’ operation and in NSW has picked up limestone haulage out of Dunmore for Boral. In 2002, NR was merged with Freight Corp and sold off to become Pacific National.
This presentation covers National Rail operations in NSW in the period 1992-1999.
Approximate run time: 102 minutes.