Australian Railroad Group - History

History

The venture was formed in 2000 as a consortium of US based rail operator Genesee and Wyoming Inc and Australian rural services company Wesfarmers, to bid for the freight operator Westrail which was being sold by the owner, the Western Australian state government. Genessee and Wyoming had previously had an Australian presence, with their Australian Southern Railroad operations in South Australia acquired from Australian National in November 1997.

Initially trains in Western Australia were operated under the Australian Western Railroad name, with AWR logos being applied to locomotives in the orange black and yellow of the parent organisation G&W. This was followed by the ARG's involvement with the Asia Pacific Transport Consortium building the Adelaide-Darwin railway, with locomotives construction the line receiving Australian Northern Railroad logos. With this expansion it was decided to rationalise the trading entities under the ARG brand and logo, which was implemented on 1 August 2002.

In February 2006 Wesfarmers announced it had reached an agreement with its joint venture partners to sell ARG for $1.3 billion. Babcock & Brown would own and run ARG's rail business in Western Australia, mainly track and infrastructure, while QR will own and run the rail haulage business and infrastructure. Queensland Rail would pay $446 million for the rolling stock, depots and customer contracts, making them move in order to become a national player in Australian rail freight. In March 2006 the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said it would not oppose the takeover, competition would not be impacted due to existing competition between ARG and QR being limited. The takeover was completed in June 2006. The SA below rail business was retained by Genesee & Wyoming as Genesee and Wyoming Australia.

On late 2011 QR Limited successfully completed its separation from Queensland Rail and became QR National. QR National has it services divided under various section. and as of July 2011 ARG is no longer a stand alone company but has become part of the much larger QR National Freight Bulk West division.