Morrison Knudsen Australia (MKA) started the RL Class project as a rebuild of the former NSWGR 442 Class locomotives into 3500hp EMD units. When MKA’s parent company in the US filed for bankruptcy shortly after the project started, it was shelved until the National Railway Equipment Company (NREC) acquired the MKA business and restarted construction, albeit using few (if any) former 442 Class parts.

RL308 was never completed due to defects in the locomotives frame. The partially built loco was stripped of parts and scrapped in January 2013.

Initially the RL Class entered service under NREC ownership in partnership with CFCLA (indeed, some of the units wore the CFCLA scheme for a period of time) on hire to various operators including QRNational and Patrick PortLink. The class were initially dogged with reliability and noise pollution issues, and were initially banned from use in NSW.

Eventually the issues were fixed, and the locomotives passed into the ownership of Coote Industrial for use in their leasing company – Greentrains. As part of the sale of South Spur Rail Services to Qube Logistics, a number of RL Class were included in the sale. RL301-307 wear the Coote Industrial livery, while RL309 and RL310 are painted in the Qube Logistics scheme.

Source: Trackside