Article: Coal cut-backs offer grain gains

[ozbob]

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Coal cut-backs offer grain gains

Coal cut-backs offer grain gains
GRAHAM FULLER
14/01/2009 2:55:00 PM
The global financial meltdown may have delivered the answer to the Queensland grain industry's long-standing concern about accessing more trains.

Transport Minister John Mickel, has told Queensland Country Life, after a meeting with AgForce, that he has instructed Queensland Rail to see whether it has any "spare capacity" in its network.

The suggestion is the world's economic slowdown "will have an impact on railing coal" in Queensland, according to the Minister.

However, Mr Mickel conceded he didn't have the figures to substantiate this viewpoint, maintaining there could be some reduction in general freight being handled by QR which, in turn, could result in some spare slots becoming available across its sprawling network.

"That's what I am trying to tease out (of QR)," he said.

Further encouragement comes in the shape of QR this week agreeing to retain all cattle freight services, plus working to expand grain freight access to six trains in tandem with developing an integrated transport strategy for agricultural commodities.

After a meeting with Mr Mickel, AgForce president John Cotter said the Minister had given AgForce "an ironclad guarantee" that there would be no rail closures and has committed to improving the cattle rail business.

"However, there are some immediate rail cost challenges for the producers and processors using cattle services, as we see cost increases in 2009 potentially beyond the point at which rail is competitive and road freight takes over," Mr Cotter said.

"While we sought a commitment on rail costs being held for a period of 12 months ? we have not been immediately successful."

QR had proposed to close service points which account for 23.6pc of the cattle business on the Quilpie/Dalby and northern line between Mt Isa and Townsville.

AgForce says this would have seen an extra 4000 truckloads of cattle pushed on to the Queensland road network.

On grain freight, Mr Cotter said the Minister had instructed QR to cart as much grain as possible and commit to securing six trains to this sector of its operations.

[Dean Quick]

To much freight has been lost to the road freight industry in the past. Have we finally seen an end to rural service cutbacks?
Hopefully, commonsense may yet prevail.

[brad C]

I wonder if a positive to the cutbacks in coal exports will be the redeployment of modified and unmodified 3900 electric locos back to the North Coast Line. 

[mufreight]

Perhaps we might see the unmodified 3900 class returned to general traffic but it is unlikely that the modified 3900's will return to general traffic unless the modifications are removed and they are returned to their original or perhaps an upgraded version of their original configuration.