State Rail Authority

During its tenure the State Rail Authority completed a number of electrification projects:

• Gosford – Wyong April 1982[3]
• Wyong – Newcastle June 1984[4]
• Waterfall – Port Kembla February 1986[5]
• Riverstone – Richmond August 1991[6]
• Coniston – Dapto January 1993[7]

The State Rail Authority introduced new 80 Class, 81 Class and 86 Class locomotives used on both freight and country passenger services, K set, C set, Tangara, Millennium and V set double deck electric passenger trains and the XPT. It also placed an order for the 82 Class and 90 Class locomotives that were delivered to FreightRail in 1994. A fleet of Denning and Scania coaches was purchased to replace withdrawn country rail services.[8]

44218 in FreightCorp livery alongside 7317 in the candy livery at Broadmeadow Locomotive Depot circa 1990

Following the election of the Greiner State Government in March 1988, consultants Booz Allen Hamilton were commissioned to prepare a report into NSW rail services. In November 1988, before the report was complete, the North Coast Overnight Express to Grafton, the Northern Mail to Moree and Tenterfield, the Bathurst day train, the Western Mail to Dubbo and the Canberra Monaro Express to Cooma all ceased.[9]

After receiving the Booz Allen Hamilton report, the government released its response in July 1989 under the title CountryLink 2000. It was announced the number of staff employed on country rail operations would fall from 18,000 to 10,000, including the withdrawal of staff from 94 country railway stations and the Nyngan – Bourke, Queanbeyan – Cooma and Glen Innes – Wallangarra lines would close.

Several country passenger services ceased over the next few years including the Silver City Comet, Northern Tablelands Express, Canberra XPT, Brisbane Limited, Pacific Coast Motorail, South Coast Daylight Express, Intercapital Daylight and Sydney/Melbourne Express These were replaced either by XPT sets, EMU/DMU sets or coaches. Coach services which had been operated by the State Rail Authority's own fleet were contracted out to private operators. The report had recommended closing all country passenger services as they were judged unviable, however this was not politically acceptable.[10][11]

The State Rail Authority was divided into business units:

• CityRail: responsible for suburban and interurban passenger services
• CountryLink: responsible for country passenger services
• FreightRail: responsible for freight services
• Rail Estate: responsible for rail property

CityRail adopted a blue and yellow colour scheme including L7 logo, CountryLink a blue, white and grey scheme and FreightRail a blue and yellow scheme.

On 1 July 1996, the State Rail Authority was restructured into four distinct entities by the Transport Administration Amendment (Rail Corporatisation and Restructuring) Act 1996[12][13] to separate infrastructure from operations as required by the Competition Policy Reform Act 1995.[14][15][16] This was part of the process of moving to an open access regime.

The entities were:[13]

• Freight Rail Corporation: responsible for freight services
• Rail Access Corporation: responsible for managing track and providing access to public and private operators
• Railway Services Authority: responsible for track and rolling stock maintenance
• State Rail Authority: passenger service operator consisting of CityRail and CountryLink

Another restructure in February 1998 saw the State Rail Authority split into four operating divisions:[13][17]

• CityRail Stations
• CountryLink
• Operations
• Passenger Fleet Maintenance

In January 2001, the Rail Access Corporation and Railway Services Authority were merged into the Rail Infrastructure Corporation that took responsibility for ownership and maintenance of the infrastructure.[18][19]

In January 2004, after much criticism and public perceptions of blame shifting between units for operational failings, RailCorp was formed taking over the passenger train operations from the residual State Rail Authority (CityRail and CountryLink) and responsibility for maintaining the greater metropolitan network from the Rail Infrastructure Corporation.[20][21]

By June 2006 much of the operational function had been transferred with the State Rail Authority in the process of being wound down.[22]