History
Southern Shorthaul Railroad was established in December 2003, when the remains of Great Northern Rail Services were purchased from CFCLA. Jason Ferguson was then the Fleet Manager for CFCLA, and this company was facing a $1.3M write-off of a bad-debt from the previous owners of Great Northern. Ferguson was able to get some other good quality people to come on board as shareholders and working Directors, and through a management buyout take on this debt and rebuild the company. On taking control and gaining ownership of Great Northern, the name was immediately changed to Southern Shorthaul Railroad. The debt to CFCLA was repaid in just under three years.
Current rail operations involve providing RailCorp with hook & pull services for their infrastructure trains operating out of Chullora and Clyde in Sydney. These trains generally operate in the areas bounded by Grafton, Muswellbrook, Bathurst, Goulburn and Bomaderry. In August 2011 SSR operated some infrastructure trains in Victoria.
In 2010 SSR entered the coal haulage market. It hauls trains from Clarence and Newstan collieries to ports at Kooragang Island, Carrington and Port Kembla.
The company also refurbishes and repairs locomotives and rolling stock at the former Bendigo railway workshops in Victoria. It also has a maintenance facility at the Lithgow State Mine Heritage Park & Railway.
In May 2012 SSR purchased GM3 from Clyde Engineering and transferred it from Kelso to Lithgow for overhaul.
In 2012, SSR formed a subsidiary BRM Leasing Pty Ltd. In October 2012 the name was changed to Consolidated Rail Leasing. Some of the SSR fleet has been made available for lease through CRL.
Read more about this topic: Southern Shorthaul Railroad
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“America is the only nation in history which, miraculously, has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.”
—Attributed to Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929)