Re: 422s - Have they been Sold?

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

In article <37C34A50.DEDAA84E@acay.com.au> Bob <alco@acay.com.au> writes:
>Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 11:43:45 +1000
>From: Bob <alco@acay.com.au>
>Subject: Re: 422s -  Have they been Sold?

>You are correct. Freightcorp can now sell to whoever they want and don't want
>to. Recently some 48 class units were stripped of all useful parts and sent to
>scrap with a deal whereby the scrappies got the shell but the bogies were
>returned. These units were never sold or put up for any form of public disposal.
>It is apparent that Freightcorp don't want their competitors like Austrac and
>Silverton to buy any more locomotives yet are happy to let associated private
>operators like Northern Rivers and Manildra and Cargils have cheap locomotives
>without having to bid for them through any public disposal system. Personally, I
>don't know how they are allowed to do this. In the UK, EW&S, were prevented from
>doing this very thing.
>Cheers
>Bob


Its not just Freightcorp who are guilty of this sort of activity.
NRC have done exactly the same thing with stored DLs and Cs .
The problem with Corporatization of Govt utilities where the Corporation 
is still Govt owned is that they are trying to behave like private companies
who cant see the forest for the trees.
Railways still seem to think that their opposition are other Railways and they 
either cant or wont see that the Road Industry is the real competitor.
The hoarding of locos and rollingstock for that matter simply puts less trains 
on the rails, raises the costs of running the existing trains thru higher 
track access charges (access charges are amortised over the total number of 
trains who use the network,the less trains the higher the charges per train.) 
and reduces the total number of Rail players.
Freightcorp beleive that there are already far too many players and would like 
to see just one or two at the most , with them naturally as one.
The end result of this stupidity is that eventually we will end up with just 
one or two rail operators who have at the most 5 - 10% of the competitive
land based freight market, with road having all the rest.
The two rail companies may indeed be very competitive between each other but 
is this what we want to achieve , its certainly not in the public interest.

MD