This is a national scheme that worked. A single regulator, one law applied across every jurisdiction, one accreditation. Where this database has spent ninety-odd processes describing the partial-national pattern — a national registration with eight state-level scopes — rail is the domain that did the hard half.

And it is the clearest case of the other half being left undone. Accreditation answers whether an operator is competent to manage safety risk. It does not answer whether a particular vehicle may run on a particular network. That is settled between the operator and each rail infrastructure manager against that manager's own interface standards, which differ. The National Transport Commission puts the consequence plainly: in Australia it can take less time to build a train than to get it approved to run across the country.

What is being done. New requirements for the interoperability of railway operations took full effect on 28 February 2026. Operators on the National Network for Interoperability must consider interoperability when changing their operations and prepare an Interoperability Management Plan as part of their safety management system. The European Train Control System has been adopted as the national standard for digital train control on major interstate freight and passenger corridors.

Statutory timeframe. ONRSR must decide to grant or refuse an application for accreditation within six months of receiving it, and a variation of accreditation is assessed in the same way as an accreditation. The clock may be formally re-set where the scope and complexity of operations, or the completeness and quality of documentation, cause unanticipated delays.