2023-24 Harvest Updates, page-126

Rail movements of the winter 2023 crop continue in NSW and Victoria.

At Milvale on the busy Cootamundra West-Stockinbingal-Parkes crosscountry line that's used by Sydney-Perth intermodal trains to avoid the hilly Blue Mountains rail route, a Pacific National-operated train is loading for GNC.

A little southwest of Milvale at Temora, a train run by Southern Shorthaul Railroad is doing the same. However its grain will be for the Allied Pinnacle plant at Maldon (NSW, not Victoria - 82.5 rail kilometres south of Sydney on the line to Melbourne. Bendigo, Victoria based SSR has the domestic grain rail haulage contract.

Regular main line grain train, train number 3922, the 0530 hours from Cootamundra to Port Kembla's Inner Harbour that @Portsmouth is so familiar with, is between Gunning and Breadalbane on the Melbourne-Sydney line while its later colleague train number 3924, scheduled at 0820 from Cootamundra, has departed pretty much on time also bound for PK. These trains should normally have grain that's for GNC although I can't always tell where the grain was loaded, as the wagons sit in Cootamundra's rail yard for some time.

In Victoria, on standard gauge, another train is loading at Warrackside (the semi-official name for the grain siding at Warracknabeal on the Hoptoun line. This branch line joins the Melbourne-Adelaide line at the small town of Murtoa near Horsham, (Victoria not UK).