AZJ has increased its weekly intermodal trains conveying...

AZJ has increased its weekly intermodal trains conveying containers from Melbourne to Perth from three to four, departing Victoria Dock on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.

The Friday train goes only as far as Port Pirie in South Australia (north of Adelaide) with the loading then attached to one of the Sydney to Perth trains. If everything runs to plan, this occurs quite efficiently.

While as usual I lack information as to how many wagons were lacking containers, the departures this week from Melbourne had respectively 73,88, 31 and 79 wagons.

The much shorter Friday train is due to the overall limit of 1800 metres for a train across the Nullarbor desert, as freight wagons from Melbourne are attached near Port Pirie to a train from Sydney that may for argument's sake have 55 wagons.

The way trains operate still isn't ideal, as Victoria Dock's rail sidings are too short for a full length train. Three of the four (excluding Friday) operate in two divisions to Moorabool (near Geelong, Victoria) where the two halves are combined. This imposes extra train crew costs but it's a function of AZJ having little or no choice where it could marshall trains in Melbourne, and load/unload containers, as competitors unlisted Pacific Naitonal, listed QUB and unlisted SCT had already taken the sweet spots.