Might just correct some statements by some people for their future reference, not trying to be a smartie just providing info I hope they'll appreciate.
My hometown, Tamworth, NSW
Most railways in Australia have been state owned from the start. As far as I know all the tracks here are owned by the State Rail Authority. There is also an abandoned line here that used to go to a town called Barraba. The lines still being worked here go to the towns of Werris Creek and Armidale.
State Rail Authority no longer exists but was rather merged with a few other government groups to form RailCorp, the standard gauge railways are owned by the government and are leased to Australian Rail Track Corporation whom maintain the lines they lease.
used to be SAR - South Australian Railways, then changed to
ANR - Australian National Railways
now its NR - National Rail, with sub divisions like Trailerrail, Seatrain
and PacNat - Pacific National
we also get the odd ARG unit passing thru, not sure wht it stands for tho
National Rail, no longer exists but was rather bought out by Pacific National.
Pacific National was a joint venture of Toll Holdings and Patrick Corporation whom was responsible for the take over National Rail, Freight Corp, Australian Transport Network Limited (Operator of TasRail), along with Freight Australia.
Toll Holdings then took over Patrick Corporation to have 100% ownership of Pacific National, after this Toll Holdings re-structured to form two companies, Toll Holdings and Asciano Limited. Pacific National after this became a wholly owned subsidiary of Asciano Limited.
Also, ARG stands for Australian Railroad Group, ARG being owned by Queensland Rail.
Well, my closest station is North Geelong, so I get Vline, West Coast Railway, and i've once (i dont know why) seen a connex comeng
West Coast Railway no longer exist after deciding not to renew their lease of the Melbourne - Warrnambool route due to most of their locomotives having cracked frames*, which had a repair cost of over 1 million dollars which was decided as being to expensive.
Hope this information was of benefit.
Oh, I have Australian Railroad Group, Pacific National, Independant Rail Australia, CFCLA and various others.
Tom
*The cracked frames were due to the welding technique's used when the loco's were assembled in the 1950's and 60's.
________
Mercedes-Benz 280 history
'(
