Southern Shorthaul Railroad

Ex Westrail J class locomotives in Newport in May 2008

Southern Shorthaul Railroad was established in December 2003, when the remains of Great Northern Rail Services were purchased from Chicago Freight Car Leasing Australia.

Current rail operations include grain haulage for Arrow Commodities, Emerald Grain, Newcastle AGRI Terminal, Allied Mills and George Weston Foods in NSW and Victoria, intermodal operations for Fletchers International Exports and Grainforce in NSW, coal services for Centennial Coal in NSW, infrastructure trains for RailCorp in NSW, locomotive and wagon maintenance services for Pacific National and V/Line in Victoria, EMU deliveries for Metro Trains Melbourne and various transfer workings in NSW and Victoria.

In 2010 SSR entered the coal haulage market. Operating on behalf of Centennial Coal, it operates trains from the NSW Western Coalfields (Airly, Clarence, Charbon and Lidsdale collieries) and Newstan Colliery to ports at Kooragang Island, Carrington and Port Kembla.[1] In 2018 the company began Hunter Valley operations, using 3 CEY class and 90 PHTH hoppers.

The company also refurbishes and repairs locomotives and rolling stock at the former Bendigo Workshops in Victoria.[2] It also has a maintenance facility at the Lithgow State Mine Heritage Park & Railway.[3][4]

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. In October 2012 the name was changed to Consolidated Rail Leasing.[5] Some of the SSR fleet has been made available for lease through CRL.

In 2013 SSR celebrated 10 years in business, created a special logo, and painted the then-new SSR class in a different variation of the standard yellow and black livery. In December 2013 SSR began operating a container service from Kelso to Port Botany. This train primarily carries containerised grain and has considerably grown in size since it first started running.

In 2014, SSR commenced operating grain services in New South Wales for George Weston Foods.[6]

In 2015, S317 and GM27 were repainted into a livery reminiscent of the one used by Australian National on the rebuilt CLP classes in 1993.

2016 was a year of rapid expansion for SSR, when they bought the Greentrains locomotive fleet [7][8] (excluding 8026 and T383 which Greentrains retained), enabling SSR to no longer hire motive power such as the VL class locomotives and to expand its operations. SSR also purchased 180 coal wagons previously used on the Leigh Creek coal train after it ceased running. SSR have since converted these into grain wagons by modifying the bottom discharge doors and fitting fibreglass lids, and have formed 3 grain trains ranging from 50 to 60 wagons from this fleet.

In 2017, SSR continued to expand when they won the contract to perform maintenance on Pacific National broad gauge locomotives in Victoria. This requires them to operate light engine transfers between Bendigo and South Dynon. They have also began delivering new Metro X'Trapolis EMUs from Alstom's Ballarat North Workshops to Metro's Epping Workshops. They also perform maintenance and overhauls on some of V/Line's locomotives and passenger rollingstock at the Bendigo workshops. The company won the Allied Mills contract from Pacific National. This sees them servicing Allied Mills facilities in Maldon, New South Wales and Kensington, Victoria. Due to the Kensington facility being located on the broad gauge network, locomotives S302 and S317, 10 BGKF and 9 BGGX wagons were converted to broad gauge, and new standard gauge wagons were purchased to service the NSW facility. Victorian grain operations were further ramped up when they won a contract with Emerald Grain to provide grain services from Southern NSW and Western Victoria for export through Appleton Dock.

In 2018, SSR commenced operating monster 100+ wagon Grain trains into South Australia & Victoria to assist in the aid of the drought in New South Wales, SA operations commenced in June and Victoria's trains commenced in September. These operations have utilised x5 C classes commonly, however the SSR, BRM, RL, G, 49 and 45 class locomotives have been used, these operations have continued into 2019.

In August 2020, CLF1, one of the company's latest acquisitions, was repainted into SSR black and yellow, the first locomotive to be painted into the scheme in almost a decade.

SSR operates a combination of owned and leased locomotives:[9][10]

Owned

As at June 2018, SSR owned and operated the following locomotives:[11]

Class	Image	Type	Gauge	Number	Units	Notes
422 class		Diesel-electric	Standard	1	2204
442 class		Diesel-electric	Standard	6	442s1, 442s2, 442s5, 442s6, 44204, 44206	442s6 long term stored at Junee Roundhouse. Repainted Candy livery and returned to original number of 44226
45 class		Diesel-electric	Standard	1	4532 (Renumbered 2019)
48 class		Diesel-electric	Standard	5	48s28, 48s33, 48s34, 48s35, 48s36	Used by John Holland for Country Rail Network maintenance trains
49 class		Diesel-electric	Standard	5	4904, 4908, 4910, 4911, 4917
600 class		Diesel-electric	Standard	2	602, 603
80 class		Diesel-electric	Standard	1	8049
830 class		Diesel-electric	Standard	1	869
B class		Diesel-electric	Standard - B61 Broad - B65, B75	3	B61, B65, B75	B65 stored at the SSR Shops in North Bendigo
BRM class		Diesel-electric	Standard	2	BRM001, BRM002
C class		Diesel-electric	Standard	6	C504, C505, C506, C507, C509, C510
G class		Diesel-electric	Standard	2	G513, G514
CL Class		Diesel-electric	Standard	4	CLF1, CLF3, CLP9, CLP12
GM class		Diesel-electric	Standard	5	GM3, GM10, GM12, GM22, GM27
L Class		Diesel-electric	Standard	1	L277	Formerly Comalco R1001. Now named Phoenix
P class		Diesel-electric	Broad	5	P11, P14, P15, P17, P18
RL class		Diesel-electric	Standard	6	RL301, RL302, RL304, RL305, RL306, RL307
S class		Diesel-electric	Broad	3 (S302,S312 and S317) and 1 (S311) Standard	S302, S311, S312, S317	S312 recently re-activated to operate mainline services.
SSR class		Diesel-electric	Standard	2	SSR101, SSR102
T class		Diesel-electric	Broad	4	T363, T381, T385, T386
Rail Tractors		Diesel-mechanical	Broad	3	LT4, LT50, RT37.