THE rail sector this past year has seen a drive to net-zero emissions, major investments in infrastructure, the evolution of new technology and an increased realisation of rail’s importance in Australia’s supply chains.

Much of this work is ongoing, and the coming year will see more infrastructure, greater efficiencies and increased innovation.

Major floods have disrupted supply chains around the country over the past couple of years. Flooding which cut Western Australia off from the east coast left the state’s supermarket shelves empty, making consumers aware of just how reliant they are on the road, rail and sea links that keep their supplies coming. And with that came substantial investment from governments and private enterprise.

Supporting urban development in Melbourne’s north

The 2024-25 federal budget, handed down in May, committed an additional $16.5 billion for new road and rail infrastructure over the next decade.

Among the federal government’s budgeted projects is Victoria’s Camerons Lane interchange, which will support urban development in Melbourne’s north and ensure easier access to and over the freeway.

It will be integral to the development of the Beveridge Intermodal Precinct which, once complete, will be the largest intermodal in Australia, transforming the nation’s supply chain and lowering transport costs.

The precinct is strategically located on the Inland Rail route, part of the Australian Rail Track Corporation (ARTC) network which spans New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia. The intermodal precinct will support double-stacked container services for 1800-metre freight trains to Adelaide, Perth, Darwin and Brisbane via Parkes, NSW, or directly to Sydney.

The ARTC is responsible for the network which is developing what it calls “enhanced resilience and reliability” to critical sections of the 8500-kilometre national rail network, which has been severely disrupted by extreme weather events since 2021.

The investment was to upgrade major sections of the vast rail network, vital to moving large volumes of containerised goods and products across the country. It is in addition to the $150 million already spent on upgrading the existing national network by ARTC over the past two years.

Works include the upgrade of existing crossing loops and culverts, track rehabilitation and re-railing, signalling works and sleeper replacements with complementary terminal infrastructure that will ensure the rail network can respond to the challenges of increased freight and climate change in the future.

The Inland Rail is considered a nation-building project that will transform how goods are moved around Australia, first connecting Beveridge to Parkes by 2027 before later connecting from Narromine, New South Wales, to Ebenezer, Queensland.

ARTC is working on 12 project sites in Victoria, four of which were nearing completion at the time of writing. Work on the other eight sites is expected to get under way in early 2025. The project is expected to be complete in 2027.

The Beveridge to Albury section of the 1600-kilometre freight rail project between Melbourne and Brisbane is progressing strongly at Wangaratta, Glenrowan and Seymour and completed at Barnawartha North.

The project is transforming Wangaratta Railway Station with a vastly improved station entrance, an expansive pedestrian underpass, a new west platform and the adjacent Green St bridge is being rebuilt to accommodate the passage of Inland Rail double-stacked freight trains.

At Glenrowan, the old Beaconsfield Parade Bridge has been replaced with larger, safer bridge that separates traffic and the large number pedestrians and tourists visiting the town’s cultural and heritage sites. Work continues on constructing nearby footpaths, asphalting local roads, erecting lighting and landscaping.

The foundations have been poured at the Seymour-Avenel Road site and the new replacement bridge is under construction. The new bridge deck superstructure is being fabricated offsite; concrete abutments are underway and approach roads either side of the bridge are being built.

Port of Melbourne looks forward to engaging on ambition and actions around mode shift to rail, as well as continuing to work together on truck movements and planning for future demand.

Port of Melbourne

Rail a key focus for Port of Melbourne

As Australia’s largest general cargo and container port, Port of Melbourne handles more than 3.2 million TEU every year, representing more than one-third of the nation’s total container trade.

The port serves Victoria, Tasmania, southeast South Australia, and southern New South Wales. Given this expansive trade catchment area, Port of Melbourne’s supply chain relies heavily on road and rail connectivity to transport exports from their origin and to deliver imports to their destination.

Trucks carry more than 94% of all containers to and from the port. Trains transport less than 6% of all TEU and are primarily used for carrying containers for export from regional areas, such as the Riverina, Sunraysia, Wimmera, Gippsland and the Goulburn Valley.

Each month, 125 freight trains are unloaded at Port of Melbourne. Of this figure, 105 are intermodal trains, bringing more than 166,000 TEU into the port per annum. The containers carried on these trains contribute to more than 22% of all full exports that depart Port of Melbourne. The remaining 20 trains that offload at the port each month are grain trains.

Port Rail Transformation Project

Besides regional freight transport, rail also serves as a mode of transport for containers in metropolitan Melbourne. The Port Rail Transformation Project is part of Port of Melbourne’s drive to create a mode shift in moving international containers, particularly imports, within the Melbourne metropolitan area.

It is the first of 12 actions outlined in the port’s 2020 rail access strategy – a response to the complex challenge of increasing freight rail transport, with a strategic approach to addressing capacity, access reliability and cost-effectiveness concerns.

The project involved significant port investment into the acquisition of existing rail assets and rail terminal land within the port, the construction of a new Coode Road rail terminal interfacing with the Swanson Dock East international container terminal and improvements to rail and road access infrastructure.

Situated on a project site spanning 80,000 square metres, the Port Rail Transformation Project comprises 3.5 kilometres of rail track that can accommodate two 600-metre trains. The project achieved practical completion in August 2023 and was successfully handed over to Patrick Terminals, which operates the track.

The Port Rail Transformation Project complements the Victorian government’s Port Rail Shuttle Network – an initiative to work with private companies to develop metropolitan intermodal terminals in order to move more containers by rail. By 2025, terminals in areas where substantial import containers are unpacked – namely Altona (13 kilometres from the port), Somerton (36 kilometres) and Dandenong South (45 kilometres) – are expected to be operational.

Looking ahead: Mode shift

In 2050, Port of Melbourne container volumes are expected to double, underpinned by the anticipation that Melbourne will become Australia’s largest city by 2031-32, according to Invest Victoria. Based on this trajectory, modelling suggests that daily truck movements at the port could grow to 34,000 by 2035.

In 2025, Port of Melbourne plans to release an updated rail access strategy, which will consider how the port – as part of the broader supply chain – can assist in working towards moving more containers by train. Shifting from road to rail for freight transport at the port presents numerous advantages, including environmental sustainability, improved supply chain resilience, reduced congestion and enhanced road safety.

A spokesperson for the port said a modal shift aligns with Port of Melbourne’s broader goals of sustainable development and economic competitiveness.

“Port of Melbourne looks forward to engaging on ambition and actions around mode shift to rail, as well as continuing to work together on truck movements and planning for future demand,” they said.

Innovation award for NSW Ports

NSW Ports, which manages Port Botany and Port Kembla and intermodal terminals at Enfield and Cooks River, is also investing in projects to support continued growth in rail mode share and supply chain efficiency.

In Sydney specifically, NSW Ports general manager of operations and environment Jonathan Lafforgue said long-term investments by the private and public sectors in the container supply chain were part of a well-established strategy to increase the use of rail and reduce the number of trucks on roads.

“Sydney’s container supply chain has been strategically planned and developed over many years and the result is a well-established, dedicated freight rail network linking the intermodal terminals with the on-dock rail terminals at the port to move containers as efficiently as possible,” Mr Lafforgue said.

“The port shuttles, which are 600-metre trains moving containers to and from the port, enable large volumes of import and export containers to be moved quickly from the port to the intermodal ahead.

“The more efficient the movement between the port and the intermodal, the better the outcome for the households and businesses awaiting the imports and the exporters looking to get their products to their global customers as quickly as possible.”

The strategy was recognised in April when NSW Ports’ joint investment with Patrick Terminals in the Sydney AutoStrad Botany Rail Expansion won the Innovation Excellence Category at the 2024 Infrastructure Partnerships Australia Awards in Melbourne.

The project integrated a fully automated on-dock rail terminal with an automated straddle-operated (AutoStrad) container terminal at Port Botany, creating the world’s first fully automated container exchange in an AutoStrad terminal on and off rail wagons.

The four-year $190-million project incorporates four 600-metre-long rail sidings, initially with three Automated Rail Mounted Gantry (ARMG) cranes.

The new rail operations enable Patrick Terminals to handle up to 500,000 TEU each year on rail. Three additional ARMG cranes can be added in future to deliver more than one million TEU worth of annual capacity, up from the 200,000-TEU capacity of the original rail terminal.

Increasing rail mode share is also a priority for non-containerised trade, such as imported construction materials and grain and mineral exports handled at Port Kembla.

“Port Kembla’s role as a trade gateway is becoming even more important given its proximity to Western Sydney, where the population growth is driving construction activity and increasing demand for construction materials such as cement, sand and aggregate,” Mr Lafforgue said.

“Similarly, regional producers rely heavily on the freight rail network to get their products from paddock to the port and beyond more efficiently.

“We’d like to see the Maldon-Dombarton Rail Line completed to drive further increases in rail and provide a direct link for both passenger and freight services between the Illawarra and Western Sydney.

“Critically, the Maldon-Dombarton Line would also improve the resilience of the freight and passenger networks in the area, which have been impacted significantly by weather events in recent years.”

The next generation of freight trains

More innovation came from Australia’s largest rail freight company Aurizon, which secured a $9.4-million grant from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency to develop the next generation of Australian freight trains, aiming to replace diesel fuel with renewable energy sources on its locomotive fleet.

The grant is to develop, test and trial a battery-electric tender to be used in conjunction with a modified locomotive.

The tender – essentially a big battery-pack on wheels – will couple with the modified locomotive to operate as a hybrid unit using both diesel and battery-electric power sources. The tender’s battery will also harness re-generative energy captured as the train travels down grades and brakes as part of normal operation.

The battery-electric tender is the second of three key initiatives in Aurizon’s strategy to deliver zero-emissions capable freight locomotives.

In May 2023, Aurizon started work on the first battery-electric locomotive to be built in Australia with a prototype expected to start on-track trials in late 2025. This technology is expected to deliver freight on hauls of up to 400 kilometres.

The battery-electric tender, in the future, when coupled with the battery-electric locomotive, aims to extend the future range for freight hauls up to 850 kilometres. Trials are expected to begin in early 2026.

In 2021 Aurizon and Anglo American agreed to work together on a feasibility study to assess the introduction of hydrogen-powered trains for bulk freight. This work concluded that a hydrogen-electric tender was the preferred configuration to pursue given the lack of space on the locomotive to store the required amount of hydrogen fuel. Aurizon continue to work with First Mode to explore this concept that, when coupled to a battery-electric locomotive, aims to cater for freight hauls greater than 850 kilometres.

Aurizon managing director and CEO Andrew Harding said Aurizon aims to use battery and hydrogen power sources, or a combination of both, to decarbonise freight options across its national footprint.

“We know that Aurizon will need different solutions for different hauls and customers,” Mr Harding said in a statement.

“We are committed to making a transition towards net-zero operational emissions based on a locomotive fleet that uses zero emissions technologies, is flexible and suited to the challenging Australian conditions in which we operate.”

Regional producers rely heavily on the freight rail network to get their products from paddock to the port and beyond more efficiently.

Jonathan Lafforgue, NSW Ports

Weather and the West

Those “challenging conditions”, with significant flooding closing down the rail corridor between Kalgoorlie and Rawlinna in Western Australia for five weeks, prompted a report to the WA government on the WA Shipping and Supply Chain Task Force in September 2023.

The Eyre Highway was also closed for several days with the supply of essential groceries and other goods to Western Australia severely impacted.

The event revealed how dependent Western Australia was on supply from the eastern states. The report pointed out that in a more uncertain world, a new level of supply-chain resilience and layers of critical asset redundancy will be seen as necessary to protect against future disruptions.

The report addressed all aspects of the supply chain including road, rail and sea.

While public attention was on empty supermarket shelves, less attention was paid publicly to supply-chain risks for other types of goods including construction materials, notably steel and mining equipment from the eastern states.

Floods on the east coast have also caused many disruptions to rail corridors in New South Wales and Queensland with most impact on export industries rather than households as in Western Australia.

The ARTC’s $170-million national network resilience program will focus heavily on hydrological analysis of flood-susceptible stretches between South Australia and Kalgoorlie.

Western Australia works to be carried out with support from the Australasian Railways Association include rail track upgrades; new five-kilometre passing lanes at two locations in SA to provide passing opportunities as well protection against flooding closing the track; improved drainage at many locations by raising track and improving culverts etcetera; and treatment of potential washaway locations between Perth and Northam following an incident in 2017 which closed the track for a week.

It also calls for better communication, management; improved rail incident recovery processes; investment in intermodal sidings and capability at key locations such as Avon, Merredin and Kalgoorlie to facilitate truck/train transfer for recovery from major outages. Currently there are no locations on the east-west track within Western Australia where this can be done.

While the report calls for a more efficient coastal shipping policy to cope with flooding events it says the rail network will remain the dominant supply chain link for east-west domestic freight.

Change for Fremantle

There is also much-discussed change afoot for the iconic Fremantle port with the proposed move of container shipping 25 kilometres south to Kwinana.

The move will involve an upgrade to rail terminals at Kenwick, Forrestfield and Kewdale, supported by an enhanced rail network and new intermodal terminals. A key element of the upgrades was increasing the amount of freight transported on rail.

The containerised rail freight share through the Port of Fremantle is the highest percentage of any of the capital city container ports in Australia.

Statistics published by the Port of Fremantle for April 2024 show the percentage of import and export containers combined hovers around the 19% to 20% mark (sometimes jumping up to around 23%).

These rail movements are subsidised by the Western Australian government with a subsidy paid of $50 per TEU, which effectively subsidies the added “lift” costs in transferring the containers between the two stevedore container terminals at the port and the railhead, as North Quay Rail Terminal is “near dock” not “on-dock” rail. The containers are double-handled on/off the train – to/from the terminals using a truck movement.

The investment and operational picture (and outlook) are then different in every Australian container port.

At the Port of Brisbane, a lack of dedicated freight rail continues to be an issue with 98% of freight trucked by road and with any freight coming by rail shared on the passenger network. The Port of Brisbane has long advocated for a dedicated rail connection to the port.

This article appeared in the July 2024 edition of DCN Magazine