Due to flooding at Cockle Creek between Sydney and Newcastle,...

Due to flooding at Cockle Creek between Sydney and Newcastle, plus further at Sandgate and Maitland in the NSW Hunter Valley, the rail lines to northwest NSW (and - irrelevant to GNC - the north coast and Brisbane) are closed.

There'll be damage to signalling cables plus likely scouring of (track) ballast. The Australian Rail Track Corporation claimed on Wednesday afternoon that the Hunter Valley may see its rail lines reopened within 48 hours. No further update.

The Blue Mountains line is also partly closed due to a landslide near Mt Victoria, so the only way for GNC's grain trains to reach a port is going south via the Parkes to Cootamundra busy crosscountry line, and then up through Goulburn, Campbelltiown, Enfield in Sydney, Hurstville and down to Port Kembla through Wollongong. (This is because the Moss Vale to Unanderra line is closed until August 2022 due to previous landslides between the trendy little town of Robertson and Unanderra, near Port Kembla but on the main Sydney - Nowra (Bomaderry) line).

So happy times as GNC tries to get more grain to port. Not possible at Carrington (Newcastle) at present.

The important line from Narrabri north to Moree is closed between April and October this year for further Inland Rail works, which last year IIRC only did half of what the ARTC set out to do. Yet it congratulates itself!

Alternatively, GNC could reroute trains via the Parkes - Cootamundra line to the North Geelong grain terminal in Geelong, but I assume bulk shipping can't easily be changed to serve different ports all shipping has their own timetables, and the costs per day of adding extra sailing time is significant. It also pushes up transport costs.