The story
El Zorro was founded in 1999 by Ray Evans who had a taste for things Spanish, El Zorro being Spanish for the fox. At the time of liquidation, the company had two shareholders: director Ray Evans, and ex-director Lisa Trezise. Geoff Tighe, a co-founder and past shareholder and director, was formerly chief executive of Great Northern Rail Services, a now defunct operator which provided locomotives and crews to other operators in Victoria until November 2002.
In 2004, the company won a contract from QR National subsidiary Interail, to provide crews for its Brisbane to Melbourne rail service on the southern leg from Junee to Melbourne. The company was an accredited rail operator in Victoria and New South Wales operating freight and infrastructure trains.
In December 2006, El Zorro commenced operating a contract for P&O Trans Australia to operate container trains between Melbourne's Swanson Dock and an intermodal container terminal at Somerton.
In August 2007, El Zorro was awarded a contract by AWB to operate two grain trains, one standard gauge, one broad gauge in Victoria and New South Wales.
In December 2007, when Pacific National announced that it was scaling back its Victorian operations, El Zorro who were the only other grain operator, admitted that the logistics of moving an entire Victorian wheat harvest were beyond its capabilities at the time, its fleet comprising only two T class locomotives and 80 wagons. The first El Zorro grain train was operated on the standard gauge on 11 December 2007, and the first broad gauge grain train on 18 January 2008.
In April 2008, El Zorro took over the Westvic Container Handling Warrnambool to Melbourne container service from Pacific National before it returned to Pacific National in October 2008. Problems El Zorro faced in running the service included a lack of broad gauge locomotives and container wagons, the removal of crossing loops on the line by infrastructure manager V/Line, which resulted in late running and delays, and the inability to carry high cube containers though the Geelong tunnel due to a lack of low platform wagons.
In August 2008, AWB awarded El Zorro a new five-year contract to operate four trains moving grain throughout Victoria and New South Wales. To operate these 84 WGBY standard gauge wagons were purchased by AWB Limited from China for this work and delivered in 2009. These were followed by 90 WGSY wagons in 2010 for both standard and broad gauge use.
In September 2008, miner Iluka Resources awarded El Zorro a contract to haul containerised mineral sands from Portland to Melbourne. Trains would run three times a week carrying 40 containers making up a load of 1,000 tonnes.
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In October 2008, the company operated a trial service to the Gippsland Intermodal Freight Terminal outside Morwell, in what was the first train to use the facility in almost three years. El Zorro was said to be in talks with local companies who wanted to utilise rail freight.
In December 2008, El Zorro started supplying rolling stock to Regional Rail Logistics, a New South Wales based freight operator running services from the Riverina region to Sydney.
From Wikipedia’s article on El Zorro (railway), shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3