History
The National Rail Corporation was established in February 1992 after the Federal Government, and State Governments of New South Wales and Victoria agreed to its establishment in July 1991. It took over the running of all interstate services from Australian National, FreightCorp and V/Line. National Rail took over cross-border operations progressively from April 1993 over the interstate network between Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Alice Springs and Perth. The first National Rail crewed trains ran between Melbourne and Adelaide on 8 November 1993.
National Rail established four business units, Intermodal, SeaTrain, SteelLink and Trailerail.
Most of National Rail's operations were on the 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge. However until the Melbourne-Adelaide railway was converted in June 1995 these services operated on the 5 ft 3 in (1,600 mm) broad gauge.
SteelLink services from Port Kembla to Long Island used to transfer their loads from standard gauge to broad gauge wagons at Albury but this was transferred to Dynon in May 1995.
From 1998 National Rail was able to compete for intrastate contracts. In June 1999 National Rail began operating blue metal trains from Dunmore to Cooks River. In August 1999 National Rail began operating iron ore services from Cobar to Newcastle with subcontractor Silverton Rail hauling the trains between Cobar and Narromine.
In November 1999 National Rail began operating limestone services from Marulan to Port Kembla. In early 2000 National Rail commenced operating a contract for Macquarie Generation to haul coal to their Bayswater and Liddell Power Stations in the Hunter Valley.
In February 2002 National Rail was combined with the New South Wales Government owned FreightCorp and sold to a Patrick Corporation and Toll Holdings consortium and rebranded as Pacific National.
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