Australian National

Diesel locomotive, built in 1991, painted by AN

Australian National was the - also officially used - short form for the Australian National Railways Commission (ANRC), which initially also operated as Australian National Railways (ANR).

Emergence

Australian National was a state railway owned by the Australian Confederation . It was established by the government under Gough Whitlam on July 1, 1975. The aim was that the Australian state should take over the railways of the individual Australian states and unify the railway system. The background was that - for historical reasons - the colonies (and later federal states) in Australia , which were previously administered separately, each set up their own railway system, without paying attention to technical compatibility with the neighbors. To this day there are three different main gauges in Australia .

The Australian National initially took over the Commonwealth Railways , the previous federal railway. The states of South Australia and Tasmania immediately approved the takeover bid for their own railways . The governments of both states belonged to the same political party as the federal government, and both the South Australian railroad and the Tasmanian railroad were heavily in debt. The Tasmanian Government Railways went completely to the AN, in South Australia the suburban traffic from Adelaide was excluded. The handover took place on March 1, 1978.

The government assumed that within 10 years it would at least avoid any new deficits. Until then, all railways were operated with - in some cases substantial - grants from the states. To achieve this, the following business principles were applied:

• Concentration on bulk freight transport and transport between the main freight centers
• Stopping traffic when demand was low
• Streamline traffic that was inadequate
• Rationalization in all areas, especially in the maintenance of the superstructure
• Acquiring larger locomotives and cars to maximize the use of trains
• Reduction of staff and more effective use of the remaining staff

Dismantling

The set goal of achieving within 10 years that at least no new deficits arose could not be achieved, so that after about 15 years there were signs of dissolution:

• First, the freight traffic and freight cars were transferred to the National Rail Corporation (NR) in 1992 . In 2001 this was merged with the freight transport of the State Rail Authority of New South Wales , the state railway of New South Wales , and sold to a consortium of Toll Holdings and Patrick Corporation and now operated as Pacific National .
• In 1998, AN's railway infrastructure was transferred to the Australian Rail Track Corporation , which was also owned by the federal government.
• The already existing south branch of the Central Australian Railway between Tarcoola and Alice Springs was transferred to the AdRail consortium in 2000 in anticipation of the extension of the line to Darwin .
• The Tasmanian railroad was sold to Australian Transport Network Limited , which in turn was acquired by Pacific National in 2004 .
• The railroad in South Australia was sold to the Australian Southern Railroad , the local passenger traffic was taken over by the Great Southern Railway .

literature

• Australian National Railways Commission: The Long Haul - Australian National 1978-1988. Focus Books, Double Bay 1991, ISBN 1-875359-08-7 .