When National Rail was formed in 1993, the company was forced to use vintage locomotives and former Australian National locomotives until a contract was placed for 120 new locomotives based on the American Dash-9 spec General Electric locomotives with Goninan Bassendean and Broadmeadow. Due to the restricted rollingstock outline and weight restrictions along the Eastern seaboard of Australia, the locomotive specifications were heavily modified to suit the existing infrastructure between Brisbane and Perth. Eventually the locomotives started emerging in 1994 as the NR class – named after the parent company

Equipped with a General Electric 7FDL16 powerplant, these locomotives can produce up to 3000kW (4020HP) to the axles – the power available is also variable and can be changed by the driver on the fly, even to other NRs that are MUed behind the command loco.

These locomotives are still the most complex yet versatile locomotive designs operating in Australia, they can be found hauling GSR’s Indian Pacific, Overland and The Ghan trains, along with lengthy superfreighters between all major capital cities in Australia. They can be found in multiple liveries ranging from NR30 and NR52 in the Indigineous liveries; NR53,NR54,NR55 in the Trailerail livery (green instead of grey); NR56,NR57 in the bright blue & white Seatrain livery; NR58,59,60 in the grey and white Steelink livery; NR74, NR75 and NR109 are running around in the bright red ‘Ghan’ Livery; NR29,73 and NR103 are painted in two different variants of the Pacific National Livery (Former – Similar to the standard NR livery, Latter – Similar to the Freightcorp Blue and Yellow livery), while NR25 can be found in the new Indian Pacific livery.

A number of NRs have previously been leased to SCT (Specialised Container Transport) – these being NRs 81, 82 and 83.