Victorian Railways (VR), owned by the Victorian State Government, operated a monopoly on both passenger and freight rail services within the state of Victoria until 1983 when, under the Victorian Transport Act 1983, this entity became VLine. This was the then conservative Victorian Government's way of setting that state’s railway up for privatisation.
In 1995 VLine was split into a passenger and a freight division and in May 1999 VLine Freight was sold to a consortium of RailAmerica, Fluor Daniel, Macquarie Bank and A Goninan & Co and rebranded as Freight Victoria. The sale included a 45 year lease of most Victorian regional passenger and freight track. In 1992 the NSW, Victorian and Federal Australian governments had moved to form National Rail (NR) to provide a more efficient interstate rail operation. By the late 1990s, NR had expanded its early mandate to include negotiating some intrastate contracts, so in 2000, Freight Victoria was rebadged as Freight Australia to take advantage of potential national rail transportation opportunities.
Freight Australia started freight services in NSW with a relatively short lived contract to haul logs from Wallerawang to Port Kembla. It picked up the Weston Milling grain contract when Austrac declared bankruptcy in 2004, and shortly after won the Shell fuel contract from FreightCorp. It also provided an intermodal service from Sydney to Melbourne for Collin Roberts Transport (CRT). From 2002, the merger of NSW’s FreightCorp and NR to form Pacific National (PN) gradually generated a great deal of pressure on rail industry competitors and, after a long and somewhat rocky ride, in 2006 Freight Australia was sold to and incorporated into PN.
In this presentation we take a brief look at early VR locomotives still operating in the VR livery in 2012, and then the early operations of VLine Freight in NSW, followed by a detailed look at Freight Australia in New South Wales, all in the period 1995 through to the PN takeover. Finally we cover the dispersal of Freight Australia locomotives after it was sold to PN. Locomotives seen in action include CLF, CLP, EL, G, GL, JL (442), L, NR, S, T (Series 1 thru 3), X, XR, 422, 44, 442, 48, 81 and 82 Class whilst those stationary include A, B, F, GM, H, P, and Y Class.
Approximate run time: 164 minutes.