Work has begun on a $500 million rail project to expand coal export capacity to enable rail freight carrier QR Limited to meet growing global demand for coal.

The $500 million upgrade of the Jilalan rail yard will lift the capacity of the maintenance and service area by more than 40 percent. According to QR Limited, the project will give a vital boost to the coal supply chain in Queensland’s Bowen Basin.

NUMBER 967 was a class act on the weekend when she rattled and rocked along the picturesque railway track from Gympie to Imbil, with about 500 passengers on board to celebrate the Mary Valley Heritage Railway's (MVHR) 10th anniversary.

Queensland Tourism Industry stalwart Paul Scurrah is jumping ship after being appointed as Executive General Manager of Queensland Rail’s Passenger business.

Most recently he worked for Roamfree Group where he was Chief Executive Officer of its Travel Online division.

Scurrahs’s previous positions include Managing Director of AOT Holidays, Executive General Manager – Strategy of Flight Centre, Executive General Manager – Commercial with Tourism Queensland, and General Manager - Customer Support division with Ansett Airlines.

Prior to that he worked for Qantas in corporate sales and American Express.

In 2003 Scurrah was awarded the Australian Institute of Management’s ‘Young Manager of the Year’ award for Queensland and the Northern Territory.

He replaces Andy Taylor.

QR CEO Lance Hockridge welcomes Scurrah’s appointment to QR’s Passenger business, which is the largest public transport operator in Queensland’s south-east corner, handling almost 59 million passenger journeys last financial year.

"At the helm of the business he will lead the transformation of the product range of urban transport, long distance services and tourist trains.

"His is one of a number of senior management appointments I have made to ensure we have the right blend of operational excellence and commercial acumen to better meet the needs of customers and achieve our vision of leadership in the transport and logistics markets."

There is a big job ahead for Scurrah, after Queensland Business Review revealed in April that QR’s Freight, Passenger, Network and Services businesses will become accountable for their own individual financial and operational performances as part as a significant decentralisation of the rail provider.

Source: Queensland Business Review - 27th May 2008 

Welcome to 2008!

 Looks like quite a big year this year, with many things happening in the industry. 

New Locomotive Classes join the fray both with QRNational and ARG 

The United Goninan/GE 5000 class will be extended with extra members of the class, along with the development of the new 6000 class - a new intermodal freight locomotive similar to the 5000 class although suited for use across the nation's Standard Gauge network.

The Siemens 3800 class will be introduced this year with the first locomotive due mid-late this year from Munich, Germany to complement the 3700 class being rebuilt from the 3100/3200 classes.

New Public Transport Provider

Premier Anna Bligh announced in November shortly after taking the helm from Peter Beattie, announced that a new public transport provider would be introduced this year incorporating Translink and possibly taking more control of scheduling and services from QR Citytrain and Traveltrain. What this means to Citytrain and Traveltrain? Who knows, we'll have to wait for the next press release.

If you can think of anything else, you can contribute to this news post by adding comments below.

ARG DD2356 is shown at Greenfield on the way into Perth (Photo: Don Copley)

Over the last few months a number of 2100 class shells were sent from Redbank Workshops to Port Lincoln Workshops for a project destined to see the units operating on ARG tracks in Western Australia.

At first details were not known as to what the upgrades were to be, however as photos of DD2356 emerged it seems the following work has been done:

QRIG is a little bit late off the mark again, unfortunately news editing is not our forte.

Steam has returned to the Australian Railway Historical Society - Qld Division's Rosewood Railway as of 29th July 2007 in the form of C17 720, disguised as C17 258 for the day.

Although still lacking the final paint job, the loco made a number of runs up and down the yard making its presence known.

Setting back for a runpast. 29/7/07 (Photo: Paul Shepherd)

Paul Sheperd's Gallery	Chris Bank's Gallery

A selection of Youtube videos of the event can be seen by clicking 'Read More...' below

QRIGer Graham Richer visited the Toowoomba Model Railway Exhibition over the weekend and has posted a number of photos showcasing the finest in Queensland Modelling. The layouts show have appeared at the annual AMRA Model Railway Show on a number of occasions, with Fairfield being a relative new comer. Enjoy.

As you know QRIG.org offers a hosting service for non-profit and personal usage sites that focus on the railways. As you know also our Gallery is growing considerably in size. To help alleviate some of the pressure on disk space, we will be removing the videos from the Gallery. We encourage users to post their videos on YouTube as it is both Free and it is easy to link back to either on QRIG or other forums.

What does this mean if we run out of space? ... Well, most likely we will be culling older photos from the Gallery until such time we have to buy another 1GB of space again (which will cost another $240/year on top of our $540/year hosting fees). 

You may have noticed Google Ads starting to appear on the site, and in the Gallery shortly. Every time you visit, click one of these ads as it helps to generate revenue to help keep our hosting fees going. Also a big thanks for past donations!

The folks at the Grandchester Saw Mill are now picking up the pieces after the fire which ravaged the premises on the 6th May 2007. They now need help from external parties in finding various pieces of machinery to restore the Marshall Engine and the C17 Boiler back to operational status.

QRIG will be posting a new sticky on the home page to try and keep track of the equipment needed.  You can also check out their website here for more information.

So far they need :

•  9x Brass Sight Oil Feeders.

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