We all know NSW and Vic loco's past and present were
the best in Australia. ;-)
No body denies that a major reform was well overdue,
but look at the cost. Pity some of that money on the
"clean slate" for NRC was not spent on infrastructure.
As you seem to know so much about National Rail, is
that 15 year contract with Goninan's for the most
expensive 120 loco's in history that introduced no new
technology to Australia, exclusive.?
Are any other organisations allowed to tender for
maintenance or future upgrade work on the NR's.?
Feather bedding is to be deplored, but the new work
practises and crewing with the present set up is a bit
of a worry, major accidents in recent times aside.
The real problem is this, it matters not a jot whether
we have a conservative or socialist in Canberra, it is
hard to tell the difference. One of them will have to
move the goal posts once more, and they have only two
choices.
1. Give NRC all national interstate rail freight and
remove all other competition.
2. Privatise NRC in the next couple of years because
if they do not, it will go down the gurgler, there is
plenty of evidence it is losing business right now and
there is more competition to come, it will NEVER pay
off the debt.
---- Tell
Alice Springs NT
>"Gary Marshall" <marshg@ideal.net.au> wrote:
>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