Goninan/GE NR Class

When National Rail began operating in 1993, the company was forced to use vintage locomotives and former Australian National locomotives until a contract was placed with Goninan in September 1995 for 80 new locomotives (later increased to 120) based on the American Dash-9 spec General Electric locomotives. NR1-60 were built at Broadmeadow and NR61-120 at Bassendean. 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. The first of them, NR61, was trialled in September 1996 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 Indigenous 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.

Three have been lost in accidents since. NR33 was written off after a truck hit its train at Lismore, Victoria, in May 2006, and NR41 and NR79 were destroyed when their train hit a truck near Cutana, South Australia, on 31 December 2023. NR80 was badly damaged in a collision at Jumperkine, WA, in December 2019, and was rebuilt at Bassendean to come back out as NR122 in 2021.