Australian Railways used to be mostly government owned and operated by the different states, but were mostly privatized in the 1990's. They don't have our familiar concept of "common carrier" service. As I understand it, government agencies own the tracks and contract the maintenance, and lease the tracks to designated private train-operating companies. Locomotives and rolling stock may come from other contract providers. If some else can provide a better short explanation, I'll be interested to hear it.
The gist of my topic here is the idea that contract carriers provide a good excuse to run different motive power on a model railroad with freelanced paint schemes and perhaps unusual motive power as well.
I was intrigued by this photo of "Southern Short Haul" loco T381, an EMD G8 export loco built 1954-1965 for service in many different countries on different gauges. Original versions had a 567 V-8 engine rated 875 HP, essentially half of a GP9. The low nose is a later modification. This would make a nifty little loco for O-gauge and would good in MU sets.
