International Railroad Discussion > Australian freight train questions

Recently I came across some videos on YouTube showing Australian general merchandise freight trains. Very interesting; lots of containers and double stacks like in the US, but not as long. However I have two questions. 

A number of the trains had a single passenger car immediately following the locos. Since I doubt these trains carried passengers, I wonder does the passenger car carry a relief train crew, providing a place to sleep and eat. This would make sense on rail lines crossing vast, mostly uninhabited regions. 

Also, some of the non-intermodal cars looked like big and very high box cars (kind of like autoracks in the US). What would they be carrying? 

Thanks for your input. 

Item one, you are correct.

Don't know about # 2

Think they are just a HiCube boxcar of sorts.Could be hauling anything.AutoRacks down here are open style ,not a lot of them used anymore.New vehicles tend to go by road transport.
Regards,DK (not my pics)

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They're pretty amazing to see coming across the Nullarbor - there's one point with 478km of dead straight track - you can see the headlights come over the horizon at night about 10 minutes before the train approaches!

yooperfan Wrote:
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> A number of the trains had a single passenger car
> immediately following the locos. Since I doubt
> these trains carried passengers, I wonder does the
> passenger car carry a relief train crew, providing
> a place to sleep and eat. This would make sense on
> rail lines crossing vast, mostly uninhabited
> regions. 

Here's a video that includes a bit on the passenger car for the crews. Also, at some point SCT Logistics was also hauling cars carrying fuel for the locomotives (on the long E/W routes), because they would otherwise have to pay too much to whoever was controlling the line and the fueling facilities. Maybe that's changed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgC15dAzOnc

>
> Also, some of the non-intermodal cars looked like
> big and very high box cars (kind of like autoracks
> in the US). What would they be carrying? 

They call it the "Greater Freighter." And it's not just basically a HQ, which in the US is 17ft high at center, but is definitely similar in height and length to autoracks. I believe it has one deck--thus two interior levels--and is intended to carry lighter cargo, especially on the upper deck due to center of gravity issues. I'm a big fan of SCT and have been following them since I first came across their Greater Freighter, perhaps 10 years ago.

The old passenger carriage behind the locomotives is indeed for relief drivers for working in remote areas and is common place in Australia. SCT, One Rail Australia and Pacific National all do inline refulling on their services, mainly in remote areas. The wagon automatically fills the locomotive fuel tanks to a set level.

The SCT PBHY class greater freighter boxcars have been in use for quite a while now. The first batch of 30 were built by Gemco in Western Australia with later orders coming from CSR in China.

I have been doing the remote working of freight trains down here for 12 years now. Originally I was doing Adelaide to Perth on the SCT services but now do Adelaide to Darwin on the One Rail Australia (formally Genesee & Wyoming Australia) services.

Cheers,