Railways in Adelaide - Operators

Operators

Rail services around Adelaide are provided by a mixture of private & government-owned organisations.

The Department for Transport Energy and Infrastructure owns and operates the suburban passenger rail network. This comprises five lines from Adelaide Railway Station on North Terrace in the CBD. The Department for Transport Energy and Infrastructure also owns and operates the Glenelg Tram. Adelaide's Tram Network is the only fully Government owned and operated tram network in Australia.

ARTC (Australian Rail Track Corporation), an agency of the Australian federal government, owns standard gauge interstate lines heading north and south, together with the dual gauge freight-only branch from Dry Creek to Port Adelaide and Pelican Point. The ARTC lines bypass the city to the west and do not enter the CBD. The ARTC network extends from Adelaide towards Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and Darwin and is used by substantial interstate freight traffic.

Freight trains are operated by a number of private operators, who have access agreements with rail network owners such as ARTC. The largest of these is Pacific National, which handles the majority of interstate traffic and has the largest locomotive fleet. Other logistics companies also operate freight trains to and from interstate destinations and within South Australia.

Australian Railroad Group (ARG) is a private consortium that owns the remaining broad-gauge lines beyond the Adelaide suburban network. These are a handful of lines used mainly to move bulk grain and stone from the Barossa Valley and mid-north region of S.A. to the Port Adelaide area. ARG also operates standard-gauge branches to Apamurra, Loxton and Pinnaroo (all in the Murray Mallee east of Adelaide) and an isolated narrow-gauge line from Port Lincoln into Eyre Peninsula. These transport seasonal grain traffic to ports for export.

Great Southern Railway (GSR) is a private company operating long-distance passenger trains on ARTC’s standard gauge lines, and run from the Adelaide Parklands Terminal (formerly Keswick Rail Terminal), not from the main city station - Keswick is an industrial suburb just west of the CBD. GSR’s trains are the Indian Pacific to Sydney and Perth, The Ghan to Alice Springs and Darwin and The Overland to Melbourne. The frequencies range from one to four trains per week. There have been no intrastate regional passenger services in South Australia since 1990.

There are several heritage railways in South Australia run by volunteers, but none of these are in the Adelaide area. The closest is SteamRanger at Mount Barker and Goolwa. More distant lines, well outside the Adelaide area, are the Pichi Richi Railway and Yorke Peninsula Railway.