Pacific National is very busy carting grain for GNC on Tuesday 1...

Pacific National is very busy carting grain for GNC on Tuesday 1 August.

A great way to kick off a month that's often quiet (in poorer years) on the handling front re exports.

A broad gauge grain train has been at Quambatook, Victoria on the Manangatang (formerly Robinvale) line since about 0730 hours yesterday. It's not usual for grain trains to spend 24 hours loading: normally it's 12, as the drivers book off and go to a motel.

Another broad gauge empty grain arrived at Deniliquin, NSW (part of the Victorian broad gauge network) at 0730 hours on Tuesday. A third Victorian train, but this time on the standard gauge Mildura and Yelta line, pulled in to Woomelang at 0630 hours.

Not to be outshone, Barellan on the NSW standard gauge Temora to Griffith secondary main line has had a train arrive this morning at 0300 hours.

Moving north to the Broken Hill line, it's bestowing its golden grain on two trains: the first is at Kiacatoo (wonderful name!), having been there since 1500 hours on Monday 31 July, while just to the east at the major town of Condobolin, another empty train operated by Pacific National arrived at around 0430 this morning.

At Narromine even further north, an empty grain train has travelled overnight from Werris Creek on the very handy and well used crosscountry line. This is the only one where I'm not certain it will load GNC-handled grain, but its position on the map I can see suggests that's likely.

At Nevertire, junction of the short branch line to Warren, a Southern Shorthaul Railroad train arrived at 0700 this morning. This appears to be loading domestic grain from GNC facilities. SSR, not PN, has the domestic grain contract.

To cap it off, at the Moree wheat sidings in northwest NSW, an empty PN train arrived at 0652 hours this morning.

This won't be the complete picture but as a partial snapshot, it shows how GNC's shipping stem that makes the company a goodly amount of 'coin' is fully occupied.

Geopolitical developments are hard to keep track of as we're so remote from the Russia-Ukraine situation and reliant on what can be propaganda from either side in media reports,.but this must be at least helping the demand for exports at least a bit.