Australian National Railways (GA235)

Note: This agency was not a South Australian State Government agency. It was a Commonwealth agency and is registered by the National Archives as CA 2105.

The Australian National Railways Commission was established by the Whitlam Government in 1975 following a promise made before the Federal election in December 1972. Gough Whitlam said that if his party was elected to government he would invite the States to hand over their railway systems to the Commonwealth, his dream was to have one railway system for the Australian nation.

On 1 July 1975, he made good that promise by establishing the Commission which acquired the assets and operations of the Commonwealth Railways. As a result of the offer to the States the governments of South Australia and Tasmania, both of which were of the same party as the national government and whose railway systems were deeply in debt, accepted. During the next two years discussions between those two States and the Federal Government resulted in a number of staffing and operating agreements being made that resulted in the whole of the freight business and non-urban railways of South Australia being transferred to the Commonwealth and operated by the Commission. The date of the handover was 1 March 1978. The metropolitan Adelaide railway lines remained with the State Transport Authority, now TransAdelaide.

AN's interstate freight operations and rolling stock were transferred to the National Rail Corporation in 1992. In 2001, NR's freight operations and rolling stock were combined with the New South Wales Government-owned FreightCorp and sold to Toll Holdings and Patrick Corporation as Pacific National. The railway infrastructure, owned by Australian National's "Track Access", was transferred to the Federal Government-owned Australian Rail Track Corporation in 1998 [1].

Great Southern Railways took charge of the passenger services, The Indian Pacific, The Ghan and the Overland on 7 November 1998.

Australian Southern Railroad (now Genesee and Wyoming Australia Pty Ltd - GWA) took control of the SA rail freight business on 31 October 1997. GWA took control of the Tarcoola to Darwin line from 1 December 2010, following a purchase of the assets of the line's previous owner, FreightLink Pty Ltd.

Following Tasmanian Government ownership, New Zealand based Corporation TranzRail took ownership of Tasrail in 1997, before passing ownership to Australian Transport Network (ATN) from 2000. In February 2004, ATN sold its Tasmanian Rail holdings to Pacific National. Having assumed responsibility for the above rail assets in 2007, in late 2009 the Tasmanian Government purchased the remaining business assets back from Pacific National. In December 2009, the Tasmanian Government established a new Government-owned Corporation, also called TasRail, to own and operate the rail lines in the state.

Sale of National Rail Corporation (NRC):

The National Rail Corporation (NRC) was established under the Commonwealth Corporation Law and was jointly owned by the Australian, New South Wales and Victorian Governments. NRC was formed under the National Rail Agreement 1991 to operate interstate freight operations in Australia; NRC commenced operations in April 1993.

NRC and the NSW Governments owned freight operator, Freightcorp were jointly sold in January 2002 and has operated as a private entity Pacific National.

Formation of Australian Rail Track Corporation (ARTC):

At the 14 November 1997 meeting of the Australian Transport Council (since replaced with the Standing Council on Transport and Infrastructure), State and Commonwealth Transport Ministers signed an Intergovernmental Agreement to establish the Australian Rail Track Corporation (ARTC) to provide a single point of access for the standard gauge interstate track. ARTC is a public company whose shares are wholly owned by the Australian Government.

ARTC was incorporated on 25 February 1998 under the Corporations Law. While the AN train services were all privatised, the AN mainline interstate track was transferred to ARTC which commenced operations on 1 July 1998.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_National_Railways_Commission, accessed 23/2/2010.
RDS 2014/06