The Tangara trains that still carry thousands of Sydney commuters every day first entered service when Bob Hawke was prime minister. They are old. They are wearing out.
And New South Wales has no factory left to build their replacements. That is the hole Premier Chris Minns is promising to fill, with a $12 billion pledge to revive train manufacturing in the Hunter region.
The money, spread over 15 years, would build a new factory at either Teralba or Broadmeadow, two sites with existing rail infrastructure and industrial land. Both are near Newcastle, a city that once built the state’s trains. The last one rolled off the line at Broadmeadow in 2012.
Then the work went to China, Spain and South Korea. The premier is expected to make the announcement this morning in a speech to the NSW Labor Conference at Sydney’s Town Hall.
He will commit to establishing the manufacturing site. He will name the two possible locations. What he will not say, because nobody has said it yet, is where the $12 billion comes from.
No money has been put aside for this project in this year’s budget. That is the risk. A pledge this size, with no funding source identified, is a promise written in pencil.
The government has previously committed to start replacing the Tangara fleet by early 2027, with a 50 per cent local content target. That procurement clock is ticking.
If the factory is not built, or not built in time, the trains will have to be bought overseas again. The manufacturing jobs will stay lost. And the jobs are real.
The government estimates 780 positions during the manufacturing stage, and 550 ongoing roles after that. For the Hunter region, which has a long industrial history tied to rail and heavy engineering, those numbers mean something concrete.
They are not abstract. They are welders, electricians, engineers, fitters. People who build things with their hands.
Broadmeadow has already done this. For generations, workers there built the Tangaras, the red rattlers, the V Sets, the S Sets. The premier’s anticipated speech to the party’s rank-and-file will invoke that history directly.
“All until 2012,” he is expected to say, “when the last train rolled off the line at Broadmeadow, after being outsourced to China, Spain and South Korea.” The speech is aimed at Labor’s grassroots, but the stakes extend well beyond party politics. The Tangara fleet, introduced in the late 1980s, is nearing the end of its operational life.
The state needs new trains. The choice is between building them here or buying them abroad. The premier has chosen to promise building them here.
The question is whether the money will follow. Officials have been clear that the $12 billion figure covers 15 years of spending.
They have not been clear on the source. This year’s state budget allocated nothing to the project. That leaves the plan exposed.
A change in government, a downturn in revenue, a competing priority — any of these could erase the pledge. But for now, the commitment is made. Two sites, Teralba and Broadmeadow, are in contention.
Both have the rail links and the industrial land. Both are in the Hunter, a region that has lost too much heavy industry over the past three decades.
The premier is betting that voters remember what was lost, and that they will wait for the funding to be found. The trains will not wait. They are aging.
They break down. They need replacing.
The factory, if it comes, will take years to build. The jobs will take years to fill. The money will take years to spend.
The first step is the pledge. The second step is the hard part.
{“@context”: “https://schema.org”, “@type”: “NewsArticle”, “headline”: “NSW pledges $12 billion to revive train manufacturing in Hunter region”, “description”: “The Tangara trains that still carry thousands of Sydney commuters every day first entered service when Bob Hawke was prime minister. They are old. They…”, “datePublished”: “2026-07-03T12:58:00+00:00T09:30:00+00:00”, “author”: {“@type”: “Person”, “name”: “Aibek Nurlan”}, “publisher”: {“@type”: “Organization”, “name”: “InfoPulse Today”, “url”: “https://newsfeed.2bme.xyz/”}}
