>Terry Burton wrote in message
>8< snip
>>They were given carte blanche over the national network,
>>they picked the eye teeth out of the freight business, they
>>signed a 15 year one billion dollar contract for 120 freight
>>loco's with maintenance and the Spotswood facility which
>>employs a hand full of people. They have used all of the
>>facilities and infrastructure built up by the CR/ANR/AN and
>>then have the bloody hide to tell us their making a profit.
>>Australian National bled to death after losing its business
>>to National Rail, and then the party hacks with union
>>support went around and said, "Oh well, AN were losing big
>>money so we had to do something, and that's why we created
>>National Rail Corp." AN were going OK until 1991.!
>>
>All this being the case, and I'm not thrashing a company line here, I think
>most people have missed a point here. AN may well have been doing ok, but it
>was still just a local identity. Parts of Westrail were ok too, and I'm sure
>the other networks had their good performers as well. But overall,
>nationally that is, the whole picture was a disorganised mess. It was
>impossible to reform rail, as a national asset, without giving the whole
>system a good enema.
>It doesn't matter who owns NR, or even who it was, but the country as a
>whole must be better off with an operator at the lead who is at least trying
>to improve things. NR isn't perfect by a long way, and I don't doubt for a
>second that they've made and will make mistakes. But they are trying to
>improve things on a daily basis.
Stuff deleted.
Pauls comments are dead right, what we have now is better than what we
originally had, but its come at a tremendous price.
The creation of NR and the abolition of AN have cost the taxpayers of this
country approx $2 - $3 billion dollars, not including the current debt that NR
has created in the purchase of its new locomotives.
The $2 to $3 billion comes about thru the bailout provisions of making
AN saleable and the wedge payments poured into NR by the 3 shareholders to get
it going in the first place.
As far as the Feds and the 3 shareholders are concerned, this is all money
going into Rail Reform when in reality it isnt improving anything.
Lets take a differant scenerio altogether and assume that AN became the
National rail Operator thru privatisation with the shares being given to the
existing State Govts, NSW,VIC,& WA.
In return for the shares the states agreed to give AN the locos and rolling
stock and crew identified as being required for the National Rail Freight task.
The feds then would not have needed to bail out AN to make it saleable, no
wedge payments would have been needed to get NR up and running , and we
wouldnt have needed to buy 120 new locos costing $850 million.
In short a saving of $2.7 billion dollars which could have then been spent on
improving the right of way.
For $2.7 billion bucks you can do a lot of real good things like.
1/ 60 kg/m rail all the way from Newport to Kewdale on concrete sleepers.
/2 60 kg/m rail all the way from Dynon to Cambelltown.
3/ 60 kg/m rail from maitland to Acacia Ridge.
This would cost approx $1.2 billion dollars, still $1.5 billion left over.
CTC from Kalgoolie all the way to Newport would be easy.
Removing the 1:40 grades between Albury and Goulburn and regrading to 1:66
would easily be achieved.
The sad thing is that money for Rail Improvements is never easy to get and now
that the Feds and the shareholding states have poured so much dough into Rail
to simply get us to where we are, (ie non of the money has actually gone into
rail improvement) its not very likely that they will want to pour in lots more.
The only hope now is that the Feds and the States eventually decide to get out
of Interstate rail altogether, NR is completely privatised, and more private
companies start running trains.
This would then form a sort of lobby group to try and get some improvement in
the right of way.
As things stand now , there is no incentive for anyone to do anything.
We all know that the new line from Newport to Ararat is chronic and the
section Ararat to Wolseley isnt much better, but theres no incentive for the
PTC to fix it , as they dont get any benefit, the same goes for the rest of
the National Network.
Im not convinced that any sort of National Track Access Regime will fix
anything either, its more likely to simply act as a form of tax collection
agency, which receives track access fees , but isnt obliged to do anything
specific with them.
A good example of this sort of scenerio is NSW track access which takes
buckets of money from NR in the form of access fees , but wont even perform
simple tasks like building a triangle at Parkes , or providing even flashing
lights at the Coota West road crossing, (flashing lights were planned in 1962.)
A possible fix could be for NR to offer to pay for fixed rail infrastructure
in return for a reduction or discount in track access fees, although its not a
good fix , as it gives an unfair benefit to NRs competitors.
cheers
MD