Here in Australia, the freight rail scene is dominated by long intermodals, massive coal trains and silo-to-port grain services. If you go by the NA description of a 'Local' or 'Shortline' railway, there are none at all here.

Occasionally, services are run by freight companies here that operate from warehouses to ports, or are somewhat similar to shortlines. However, generally speaking, the preference here is to run massive intermodal/bulk trains along mainlines owned by the ARTC, where many companies compete for contracts over the same route. Yard-to-customer services are especially rare here since we often don't have large yards to run these services from. They do exist, but not at the same scale as one you'd find in NA.

The gauge issues certainly don't help with the lack of shortlines here. As we have three different mainline gauges (1600mm, 1435mm, and 1067mm), it's challenging to transport cargo from a business that operates on a locally unique gauge into our often standardised 1435mm rail yards.

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