> >also someone said why not use a BL the reason for that is that all the
> >BL's have had the ASW equipment removed as such will never lead in
> >victoria again "Thak goodness for that"!!!
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> Fair enough you are a Victorian.
Have you ever worked on a BL??? Porbably not, they are a cheap and nasty
version of a very good loco, the G class.
> You miss the point, this political creation of a former
> Federal Labor Government was supposed to haul FREIGHT.
> 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.!
>
> ----Tell
> Alice Springs NT
>
>
National Rail may have been set up primarily to haul freight, but the goal
posts have been changed since then, not by National Rail but by the Federal
Government.
I would suggest that you take your head out of the green and gold coloured
Todd River sand. The facts of the matter are plain.
National Rail was created to save a mortally wounded interstate rail
industry that was losing mega dollars, brought on by decades of governments
biased toward the road lobby, ageing and poorly maintained equipment,
exaserbated by archaic work practices that could in no way be reformed
without major industrial trouble, eg. up to four crews to get a intersate
freight from Sydney to Melbourne or Brisbane in the 1990's is just plain
ridiculous.
What was needed was an organisation that could start with a clean slate to
enable the basis that could be built on to form a viable and sustainable
industry.
You state that Natoinal Rail were given carte blanche over the national
network, how is that so? It is fairly easy to work out what traffic is
interstate and what is intrastate I would think.
The purchase of 120 new locos is exactly what was required to obtain some
sort of reliability into an ageing locomotive fleet with an abominable
reliability record. The results of which are now starting to be realised
with NR's train services on time record now at a level (on the East coast
at least) unheard of.
It is understandable that in this day and age of technology that only a
handful of people be required to maintain a loco fleet of 120 locos,
considering that amount of time between inspections is much greater than in
the past. It was only a few short years ago that locos in the SRA fleet
were inspected every seven days. With a maitenance schedule like that they
should be the best performing locos in the country, they were not.
The whole idea of setting up National Rail was to turn the business around,
by that, they mean make a profit, you seem to think that it's an offence
for a railway in this country to make money.
Australian National may have been doing things better than other states,
but AN was not the national carrier as the name falsly implied, it was just
the healthier link in a rusting, decaying chain, it is not much good having
a healthy heart if you've got lung cancer.
National Rail is just what this country's rail industry needs, to show what
can be done, they are not perfect by a long way and have made mistakes, but
this is not a process that is going to take a few short years, but a good
start has been made.
Regards
Gary