Who is to say that with a different cost structure they might not return?  How do ORA's labour contracts compare?

Not saying they won't, just that they will need to a major change to their way of past thinking. They couldn't handle intermodal in the past, the Adelaide Darwin traffic is way down on what it was, not exactly a recipe for success

Anything is possible in the current environment, but I wouldn't mind betting a sly tenner that Aurizon will actually lose some of the little regional traffic remaining in South Australia.

There is an article here about running cattle as new traffic which the business case supports that could be positive and Aurizon have that experience out of Queensland.