Australian National Railways Commission

The Australian National Railways Commission (ANRC) was a government owned railway operator in Australia. ANRC was also known as Australian National Railways (ANR) in its early years and was later rebranded as Australian National (AN).

History

The Australian National Railways Commission was established by the Whitlam Government in 1975 following a promise made before the Federal election in December 1972. Gough Whitlam said that if his party was elected to government he would invite the States to hand over their railway systems to the Commonwealth, his dream was to have one railway system for the Australian nation.

On 1 July 1975, he made good that promise by establishing the Commission which acquired the assets and operations of the Commonwealth Railways. As a result of the offer to the States the governments of South Australia and Tasmania, both of which were of the same party as the national government and whose railway systems were deeply in debt, accepted. During the next two years discussions between those two States and the Federal Government resulted in a number of staffing and operating agreements being made that resulted in the whole of the Tasmanian Government Railways and the freight business and non-urban railways of South Australia being transferred to the Commonwealth and operated by the Commission. The date of the hand over was 1 March 1978. The metropolitan Adelaide railway lines remained with the State Transport Authority, now TransAdelaide).

Overnight the Commission went from an organisation controlling just over convert|2000|km of track with a total staff of 4,000 employees to the operator of one-fifth of the trackage of Australia's rail network. It now controlled convert|7890|km of rail track being convert|2395|km of broad gauge (RailGauge|1600), convert|2812|km of standard gauge (RailGauge|sg) and convert|2683|km of narrow gauge (RailGauge|1067) track. The narrow gauge track included convert|851|km in the island state of Tasmania and convert|748|km on South Australia's Eyre Peninsula which is isolated from the mainland rail systems. The remainder of the narrow gauge tracks were two short lines in the Mid North of South Australia radiating from the stations at Peterborough and Gladstone and the famous Ghan line from Marree to Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. The total number of employees numbered just over 12,000.

Australian National Railways Commission was an Australian Government owned corporation and, in 1978, the Whitlam Government made it clear to the Commission that it was expected to achieve a financial break-even point during the next 10 years. This decision was unique in Australia's railway history because with the exception of the Commonwealth Railways, all the State systems were being financially supported by their respective governments for amounts that were starting to impact on the provision of other services such as health. The Commission appointed a professional engineer with overseas experience as General Manager in a break from the traditional railway practice of making such appointments from within the organisations.

The Commission's first Corporate Plan in 1979 set out the six ways that the Commission was to pursue if it was to survive. These were:a) concentrating its marketing drive on bulk traffic, inter-capital freight and inter-major city freight.b) seeking agreement to cease services where there is little or no demand for the services.c) rationalisation of services and withdrawal of services not effectively demanded.d) implement technological changes in all areas of railway operation particularly track maintenance.e) acquire bigger and more efficient locomotives and rolling stock to operate trains at maximum capacity.f) pursue a vigorous policy directed towards staff reductions and more efficient use of manpower.

In 1980 a delegation of senior staff and led by the General Manager visited North America to examine current railway practices. In Canada the delegation had talks with Canadian National Railway (which like Australian National was government-owned) and Canadian Pacific Railway. In the United States contact was made with Chessie System and Southern Pacific Railroad. The areas looked at included marketing and pricing, finance and planning, engineering and staff training.

Demise

AN's interstate freight operations and rolling stock were transferred to the National Rail Corporation (NR) in 1992. In 2001, NR's freight operations and rolling stock were combined with the New South Wales Government-owned FreightCorp and sold to Toll Holdings and Patrick Corporation as Pacific National. The railway infrastructure, owned by Australian National's "Track Access", was transferred to the Federal Government-owned Australian Rail Track Corporation in 1998 [http://artc.com.au/about/history.htm accessed 16 March 2008] . The Tarcoola to Alice Springs line was transferred to the AdRail Consortium as part of a deal to build the railway between Alice Springs and Darwin in 2000.

TasRail, its Tasmanian operations and infrastructure, was sold to Australian Transport Network Limited, which was taken over by Pacific National in 2004. Its South Australian branch lines were sold to the Australian Southern Railroad, and passenger operations were taken over by Great Southern Railway.

References

uggested Reading

* Australian National Railways Commission (1991) "The Long Haul - Australian National 1978-1988" Focus Books, Double Day ISBN1875359087