The Australian rail freight industry is primarily focused around the major coastal cities in the east, south-east and south-west of the nation, as well as some regional areas in the Northern Territory. 
The Australian rail network comprises approximately 40,000 km of track that is used in the haulage of freight such as coal, minerals, bulk agricultural produce, general freight and chemicals. 
Australia’s rail freight services are economical over a wide range of distances ranging from the haulage of general freight over 4,000km across Australia to the transport of other bulk commodities over distances as short as 100km.

The Australian rail network has evolved over the past ten years through the formation of a number of individual state-based regimes of track type, operator and track management. 

Industry consolidation and privatisation has seen Pacific National emerge as one of Australia’s dominant rail freight companies when the operations of National Rail and FreightCorp were combined in early 2002 along with the subsequent acquisition of Freight Australia in 2004.

Freight in Australia is typically classified into two areas:

Bulk freight

• Predominantly mineral and agricultural products such as coal, ores, grain and sugar. 
• Bulk freight is most commonly intended for export and is transported intrastate, from the area of production to the closest port. 
• The key determinants of demand for Australian commodity exports are determined by world commodity prices, exchange rates and world commodity stock levels.

Non-bulk freight

• These include containerised intermodal freight supplied by forwarding agents and other general freight. 
• Non-bulk cargoes are generally shipped interstate and from rural areas to port. 

The Australian freight rail industry carries close to 6 million tonnes of freight each year and generates annual revenues of almost $4 billion.

Rail delivers approximately 38 per cent of Australia’s freight task on a tonnes per kilometre basis and in total carried 25 per cent of the country’s freight.

Australia’s rail network consists of approximately [40,000] km of both public and privately owned track, which spans the country, linking mainland capital cities and providing regional networks in each state.
Some of Australia’s rail infrastructure is over 100 years old.  At the time of federation each state decided on a rail gauge (track width) for their State.  As a result of this, there are 3 different track gauges in Australia .

• Standard - 1,435mm
• Narrow - 1,067mm
• Broad - 1,600mm

The Australian Rail Network

The interstate rail network is split into two corridors; North-South and East-West.

North-South refers to the network along the Eastern seaboard, from Victoria to Queensland while East-West refers to the network which spans the country from Western Australia across to Victoria and NSW.

At present the rail industry is made up of the following groups of participants:

• Vertically integrated operators – these are rail operators that also manage track related infrastructure.
• Track managers – these are the managers of the track infrastructure and manage the access arrangements with rail operators. 
• Rail operators – these are the rail operators that move freight are reliant on access arrangements with the track managers and include Pacific National, SCT and FreightLink.

There are also a number of very large privately owned rail operators in Australia such as:

• BHP Billiton’s Iron Ore – a railway from its mines to Port Hedland
• Pilbara Rail - the joint venture between Hammersley and Robe River formed in 2002 running from the [Pilbara] region to Cape Lambert; and
• Sugar Cane Railways – a sugar cane railway operating in Queensland.

Bulk freight

• Rail hauls approximately 38 per cent of the total bulk freight task in Australia.

Non - bulk freight

• The rail transport corridors along the East Coast states of Australia carry on average 14 per cent of the total freight task between Brisbane – Sydney – Melbourne.
• The rail transport corridor between the East to West coasts of Australia carry on average, 60 per cent of the total freight task between the East Coasts States – Perth.

Rail transport has significantly lower social and environmental impacts than road transport in Australia.

Efficient rail is a cheaper mode of freight transport than road on all inter capital corridors

Rail is the safest form of land transport

Rail is 9 times more energy efficient than road

one train, two drivers = 150 trucks & 45,000 litres of fuel

Australian transport fatality statistics* show that

• road transport is responsible for 94 per cent of the total transport related fatalities
• rail transport is responsible for 1.5 per cent of the total transport related fatalities

Australian estimated greenhouse gas emissions statistics* show that

• road transport produces 12 per cent of Australia’s total greenhouse gas emissions
• rail transport produces 0.3 per cent of Australia’s total greenhouse gas emissions

* BTRE Australian Transport Statistics August 2006