Railway Digest Magazine May 2025 Back Issue

A day of mainline loading in Western NSW
Although not confined to NSW, that state has made good use of train loading on mainlines in recent years as a “low-cost” arrangement to help capture freight business that may have been lost to road transport if expensive infrastructure like a siding was required. Indeed, as John Hoyle relates, some former mainline loading locations have achieved a level of success that justified the provision of a siding to avoid the drawback of mainline loading – blocking the line to other rail traffic while loading takes place.

Pacific National's SQTY Triple Articulated Container Wagons
The SQTY wagons were originally purchased by QUBE in 2024, hence the initial “S” in the code. The traffic that these wagons were intended for did not eventuate, and they were stored for some time. However, Pacific National, who have probably the largest fleet of container wagons in Australia, decided to buy these wagons. Peter Clark takes a detailed look at exactly why this came to pass.

'Olly' to the rescue
During the heavy flood in early February 2025, part of the Bruce Highway’s Ollera Creek Bridge, about halfway between Townsville and Ingham, was washed away. Within a short time, Queensland Rail offered a hi-rail bus to ferry stranded passengers while the Bruce Highway bridge was damaged and awaiting temporary bridge construction. The railbus, nicknamed ‘Olly’, carried passengers who required essential travel, as well as supplies, groceries and rescue equipment, as James Chuang reports.

XPTs and Xplorers: A visit to Southern NSW
There had been an expectation that the XPT and Xplorer fleet, workhorses of regional NSW railway lines, would soon retire. However, there have been significant delays in the delivery of the replacement CAF Civity Bi-mode trains, which were originally scheduled to be in service by 2023. Despite this, Jonathan Green decided that a holiday from Melbourne to the Riverina area to ride these trains was in order.