Subscribe to download
Pacific National NR 2

(Originally I was going to just do one number variant (NR 34). Why I decided to make five is anyone's guess).

The NR's are currently the only 'official' model from Australian that we currently have in Rolling Line. 120 of these locomotives were built by A. Goninan & Co. between 1996 and 1998. The first 60 (NR's 1 to 60) were built in Broadmeadow, New South Wales, while the remaining engines (NR's 61 to 120) were built in Western Australia. NR 61 was the first of her class to be completed, emerging from the Midland, WA works on the 18th of September, 1996. A few weeks later, the first Broadmeadow-built engine was finished.

NR stands for National Rail, which is the company for which the locomotives were originally built. When the NR class entered service, National Rail was able to returned leased locomotives to their owners. Engines from the Ex-NSWGR 48 and 442 classes were returned to Silverton Rail, while the 80, 81, 82 and 422 classes were returned to FreightCorp.

Although they were originally intended for freight traffic, NR locomotives have gone on to serve as reliable passenger engines too. Great Southern Rail (now running under the name 'Journey Beyond Rail Expeditions') sub-contracted National Rail to provide locomotives for their luxury passenger trains, with the first GSR train running behind NR 77 on the 1st of November, 1997.

In 2002, National Rail was sold to Pacific National, who still operate the NR class today. The deal included the transfer of all 120 locomotives. Initially all NR's were painted in the grey and orange National Rail livery. When they were transferred to PN, they simply had the NR logos replaced with PN. Starting in the early 2010's, the class was gradually repainted into the now-standard Pacific National blue livery. However, there have been a few exceptions:

(The Ghan red) NR's 18, 74, 75 and 109
(Indian Pacific - several variants) 18, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29 and 86
(Southern Spirit green and white) 84 and 85
(Great Southern orange) 30 and 31

Some NR's (such as 8, 29, 73 and 103) ended up receiving non-standard variants of PN blue. I have replicated NR's 8, 29 and 103 as Rolling Line re-skins.

Today the NR class serves as a prominent mixed-traffic locomotive in the Pacific National fleet. Unfortunately at least one NR has been written off and scrapped after an accident. This was NR 33, who was scrapped in 2006 without ever receiving Pacific National blue.

A more comprehensive history of the NR class can be found here (and yes, there are info sources cited on this page):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Rail_NR_class