The V/Line G class Part 2

In March 1999 V/Line Freight was sold to consortium Freight Victoria, which included a United States of America company, Rail America. V/Line Freight became Freight Victoria (FV). The new company started using a new livery of dark green and yellow, a livery that harks back to the VR era with yellow wings on the nose. In September 1999, G543 was the first G class to receive the new livery.

V/Line liveried G517 and G518 were wrecked in a fatal headon collision at Ararat on 26 November 1999. Both units were deemed beyond economic repair and were written off and scrapped in May 2001.

In March 2000 Freight Victoria was renamed Freight Australia (FA). With the new branding came new work. FA won grain and log contracts in New South Wales, including operating grain trains from the Riverina to Melbourne and Port Kembla. The G class started to spread their operational wings beyond the NSW Main South (Sydney to Albury) that they worked in their V/Line days as part of through working to Sydney.

In October 2000 FA secured the Specialised Container Transport (SCT) hook and pull contract from Australian Southern Railroad (ASR) and commenced operations from Melbourne to Perth with the G class being used almost exclusively. Before then, the average duty cycle of the G class was between 12–14 hours of operation; this changed to 48 hours of continuous high-demand operation. High drawbar loads combined with the harsh, unforgiving nature of the Trans-Australian Railway exposed numerous reliability issues with the class. This was not inherent in the design, but the shift in the maintenance