UGL Rail

UGL Rail is an Australian rail company specialising in building, maintaining and refurbishing diesel locomotives, diesel and electric multiple units and freight wagons. It is a subsidiary of UGL Limited and is based in Melbourne, with a staff of 1,200 across Australia and Asia. It operates factories in Broadmeadow, Maintrain Auburn, Spotswood and Bassendean. While it used to operate a factory in Taree, the plant was shut down and the equipment sold off.

History
Pacific National NR class
New South Wales 43 class
NSW TrainLink H set
Sydney Trains C Set
Metro Trains Melbourne X'Trapolis in November 2009
Hong Kong Light Rail Phase III LRV

Founded in Australia in 1899 by Cornish brothers Alfred and Ralph Goninan as an engineering and manufacturing company for the coal industry, A Goninan & Co Limited was incorporated as a public company in 1905.[1]

It entered the rail business in 1917 via Commonwealth Steel Products Company of Waratah, Newcastle, a wheel and axle manufacturer because they could no longer be imported from Belgium due to World War I. A Goninan & Co moved to more convenient freehold land at Broadmeadow in 1919 and built a flourishing business in general engineering.[1] It made pitheads, boilers, wagons and a huge, cast 41-ton block for the district's coal trade.[1] In October 1964, A Goninan & Co was purchased by Howard Smith.

In August 1999, A Goninan & Co was sold to United Group and rebranded United Goninan.[2]

In 2005, it was renamed United Group Rail as part of a reorganisation following United Group's purchase of Alstom's Australian subsidiary, Alstom Transport Australia and New Zealand.[3]

Factories

While most items were manufactured at Broadmeadow, it did purchase Comeng's Bassendean, Western Australia plant. This plant rebuilt many Pilbara Alco locomotives with General Electric components in the 1990s as well as building 17 Westrail P class and 60 NR class locomotives.[4]

In 1983 a factory was established in Townsville to fulfill a contract for Queensland Railways 2600 class locomotives that required them to be built locally. It later built the 2800 class.

Products

National

New South Wales

Victoria

Queensland

Western Australia

Hong Kong

New South Wales

Sydney Metro

UGL is a part of Metro Trains Sydney which constructed and now operates the Sydney Metro Northwest[5]

New Intercity Fleet

UGL is a member of the RailConnect NSW consortium, a joint venture between UGL, Hyundai Rotem and Mitsubishi Electric, which has designed and will build and maintain more than 500 NSW TrainLink D set train carriages. Delivery commenced in the second half of 2019. Maintenance will be carried out at the Kangy Angy Maintenance Centre.[6]

UGL Unipart

UGL Rail has been responsible for the maintenance of all of CityRail's EMU fleet at Maintrain, Auburn since March 1994 following the closure of Electric Carriage Workshops and Eveleigh Carriage Workshops.[7] In the early 1990s A Goninan & Co refurbished S and V sets at Broadmeadow as part of the Citydecker program.

Since December 2011 UGL Unipart, a 70:30 joint venture with Unipart, has maintained most of CityRail and later Sydney Trains and NSW TrainLink's EMU fleet.[8]

Maintenance on H sets was initially carried out at Eveleigh but from 2018 is done at other depots with major work done at Maintrain, Auburn as for other types of Sydney Trains sets. The contract to maintain 1,050 Sydney Trains carriages including H and V sets was extended for two years from 1 July 2019.[9]

Metro Trains Melbourne

UGL Rail owns 20% of Metro Trains Melbourne, the consortium that has run Melbourne's metro railway network since November 2009.[10]

Adelaide

In July 2020, UGL Rail became responsible for maintenance of the Glenelg tram line in Adelaide as part of the Torrens Connect consortium.[11][12]

References
  1. Goninan, Alfred (1865 - 1953) Australian Dictionary of Biography
  2. "United Group Buys Goninan from Howard Smith" Railway Digest October 1999 page 12
  3. United to acquire rail business Alstom Sydney Morning Herald 2 June 2005
  4. Clark, Peter (2012). An Australian Locomotive Guide. Rosenberg Publishing. p. 24. ISBN 9781921719554.
  5. Sydney Metro Northwest - case study UGL Rail
  6. New Intercity Fleet UGL
  7. "Goninan's Maintrain Centre Officially Opened" Railway Digest May 1994 page 9
  8. UGL Unipart CIMIC Group
  9. UGL secures $277M extension with Sydney Trains UGL 31 January 2019
  10. Melbourne's trains to get Metro brand Railway Gazette International 3 September 2009
  11. Adelaide Bus and Public Transport Contracts Announced Australasian Bus & Coach 10 March 2020
  12. UGL and John Holland to operate Adelaide trams Metro Report International 12 March 2020
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