Since the Trackside Videos DVDs Hunter Heavies, What’s New in NSW Coal 1-2 and Northern Coal 1-5 Series were produced, much change has occurred to coal operations in NSW Hunter Valley.
Back in the 1990s Hunter Valley coal was the domain of FreightCorp with 90 to 82 class moving coal to Port Waratah and Kooragang Island receival facilities. Then National Rail entered the scene with its first foray being the Macquarie Power contract where it used NR class in push-pull operations hauling coal in new high capacity wagons from various collieries. Following the merger of FreightCorp and National Rail, coal haulage again came under one railway operator, Pacific National.
Then in 2005 QR National (which in 2012 was rebadged as Aurizon) commenced hauling coal from Mt Arthur with a fleet of new Goninan GE locomotives and high capacity coal wagons. But even with two competitors to haul coal from its various collieries, Xstrata was not happy with coal haulage pricing and around 2010 decided on forming its own railway, ending up with 30 Goninan GE locomotives and some 894 high capacity coal wagons. In a token effort to also show its dissatisfaction with haulage pricing, Whitehaven Coal purchased 3 Downer EDI locomotives and a small fleet of high capacity wagons but these were operated on their behalf by Pacific National. Whitehaven ultimately received more competitive pricing from Aurizon and has since used their services.
In 2013 Xstrata was fully acquired by Glencore and the locomotive and wagon livery changed from Xstrata to Glencore. Then late in 2016, to reduce its enormous debt, Glencore sold its entire Hunter Valley rail operations to Genesee & Wyoming Australia (GWA) who have a contract to haul coal for Glencore.
Consequently there are now three major rail operators hauling coal in the Hunter Valley, these being Aurizon, GWA (at this time almost fully in Glencore livery) and PacNat each with about 33% of the action. This DVD shows these in action between Singleton and Port Waratah in the period 2015-2017. Locomotive classes seen in action include 5000, 5020, 82, 90, 92, 93, EL, GWU, TT and XRN.