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Crawfords Freightlines PHC 001

Crawfords Freightlines is a relatively young freight transport company in Australia. The company gets its named from its founder - Peter Crawford, and their headquarters are in Sandgate, New South Wales. Based on a quick Google Maps inspection, it appears that Sandgate is in the northwest of Newcastle.

As well as a large fleet of trucks, Crawfords also operate some train services. The most important of these is the Sandgate to Port Botany (Sydney) train, which ones once a day in each direction. This service has been in operation since 2012.

Between 2012 and 2016, the Sandgate to Port Botany train was hauled by ex-Victorian Railways C class locomotives, which were leased from a company called Greentrains. In March 2016, two new locomotives entered service with Crawfords. These two are of the UGL Rail C44ACi type, a series of locomotives built by UGL Rail that were heavily based on the NR class (hence the use of the NR model as the base for this re-skin).

The two C44ACi's on Crawfords roster are classified as the PHC class. I'm not entirely sure what PHC stands for, but I think it's the initials of the company's founder. Each engine has a name - PHC 001 'Carrot' and PHC 002 'Spud'. Those names are quite amusing to me.

Today the two-strong PHC class are used primarily on the Sandgate to Port Botany train, as well as trains serving the new Werris Creek Intermodal Rail Terminal (also in New South Wales), which opened in June 2019. In October 2019, Crawfords started running a shuttle service from Werris Creek to Narrabri, thus make more use out of the PHC locomotives.

At just four years old, the PHC pair are some of the youngest locomotives I know about at the time of uploading. But I think the youngest is an engine on KiwiRail's roster - DL 9688. That engine was built in 2018, and arrived in New Zealand in October of that year.