Re: How many NR locos are now written of?

[mauried@commslab.gov.au (Maurie Daly)]

In article <3638658f.0@news.highway1.com.au> "David & Jan Winter" <winterd@nospam-icenet.com.au> writes:
>From: "David & Jan Winter" <winterd@nospam-icenet.com.au>
>Subject: Re: How many NR locos are now written of?
>Date: Wed, 28 Oct 1998 23:40:40 +0800

>May I add a little here:

>My next door neighbour was an interstate truckie - ticketed for road trains
>(oh, by the way, they are now "long vehicles" in the Perth Metro area 'cos
>the recently retired Transport Minister said we had no road trains on
>suburban streets, see?).

>He is now out of work. Driver's hours reg changes in SA and elsewhere "east"
>have had the effect of totally changing the structure of long distance
>trucking; from solo or 2-up to relay drivers driving the maximum leg
>possible in one shift by one driver. Apparently, at the WA-SA border,
>companies now have drivers based, ready to take over rigs as they arrive.

>This change obviously will further push the modal split east-west towards
>rail. Maybe NRC aren't totally and completely bloody minded in seeking a
>substantial stable of locos, but I can't believe that Australia was 120
>locos short of the national industry's needs!

>DW



The basic problem with the East - West route is that although it is where rail 
is doing much better than road,it in absolute tonnage terms is a pretty small 
part of the total interstate rail freight market.
Approx 1.5 Million tonnes going West and only 600000 tonnes coming back.
(source BTCE working paper 14.2 on rail Infrastructure).
Truckies historically havnt liked the East - West route for exactly the above 
reason, too hard to get a return load.
Where the majority of the interstate freight market is , ie Melb - Sydney - 
Brisbane, is where rail is performing worst in comparison to road,and it will 
get a lot worse when the Feds duplicate the Pacific Highway and Bdouble Trucks 
are let loose.
Melb - Sydney (fairly obviously ) is the biggest freight market , and rail 
carries only about 3.5 million tonnes , loading is fairly symmetrical, and 
slightly less on Sydney - Brisbane about 3 million tonnes.
But the above observation by the previous writer is correct , prior to the 
introduction on NRC , all this freight was carried with 120 less locos than we 
have today, some have now obviously been written off and we have a heap 
in storage , ie the Rail Industry in Australia now has too many locos for the 
available freight task, and at the end of the day , someone has to pay for 
this , and it wont be the Road freight Industry, which has no such thing as 
spare or stored prime movers.
Its interesting that in the early stages of the formation of NR they 
estimated that only 80 new locos would be needed, but later on increased the 
order to 120 , and at the same time the existing interstate Rail freight 
market was approx 14 million tonnes total , its now around 10 million 
tonnes.
Given that NR knew that they would inherit a substantial number of existing 
locos from the old AN, PTC and SRA as the shareholders agreement required 
its difficult to see why so many new ones were needed to handle the current 
freight task , even if one assumes that NR retained its monopoly on 
Interstate freight , which was never guaranteed.

As the Asian Economic downturn continues to bite freight transport , both road 
and rail  freight will continue to decline, and even if the ratio stays the 
same , its hard to see how any of the current rail players , will make any 
profit, the exception currently being ASR who seem to be defying the trend.
Maybe because they dont have a fleet of brand new locos and dont have a
$850 million liability.

The other complication for rail operators is of course the totally idiotic
track access regime , which road operators dont have to contend with.
I cant see any progress in fixing any of this .

cheers
MD