Australian National Railways Commission
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830 class at Mount Gambier in 1983
|
|
| Industry | Railway operator |
|---|---|
| Predecessor |
Commonwealth Railways South Australian Railways |
| Successor |
Australian Rail Track Corporation Australian Southern Railroad Great Southern Rail National Rail |
| Founded | 1 July 1975 |
| Defunct | 30 June 1998 |
| Headquarters | Adelaide |
|
Area served
|
Northern Territory South Australia Western Australia |
| Parent | Government of Australia |
| Subsidiaries | AN Tasrail |
Australian National was a railway operator owned by the Government of Australia. It was known as Australian National Railways in its early years, before being rebranded as Australian National.
Australian National Railways was established by the Whitlam Federal Government following a commitment made in the 1972 election to invite the states to hand over their railway systems to the federal government. On 1 July 1975 Australian National Railways was formed taking over the operations of the Federal Government owned Commonwealth Railways.
The State Governments of South Australia and Tasmania whose railway systems were deeply in debt, accepted. During the next two years discussions between these two states and the federal government resulted in a number of staffing and operating agreements being made that resulted in all South Australian Railways services (except the Adelaide metropolitan passenger network) and all Tasmanian Government Railways services transferring to Australian National Railway in March 1978, the latter being rebranded AN Tasrail.
Overnight Australian National Railways went from an organisation controlling just over 2,000 kilometres of track with a total staff of 4,000 employees to the operator of 20% of Australia's rail network. It now controlled 7,890 kilometres of rail track being 2,395 km of broad gauge, 2,812 km of standard gauge and 2,683 km of narrow gauge track. The narrow gauge track included 851 km in Tasmania and 748 km on South Australia's isolated Eyre Peninsula Railway. The remainder of the narrow gauge tracks were two short lines in the Mid North of South Australia radiating from 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.
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