UGL CEO John Pistak was on-hand with a number of special guests including UGL's managing director Doug Moss and executive general manager of transport Ian Quarrie, Acting NSW Premier Paul Toole and Minister for Regional Transport and Roads Sam Farraway, Member for Orange Phil Donato and Orange mayor Jason Hamling.

All were welcomed by Uncle Ralph Naden OAM who performed a Welcome to Country smoking ceremony after an introduction from Orange Local Aboriginal Land Council Chair Jamie Newman.

Mr Pistak said this was UGL's first foray into day-to-day rail operations after winning a $1.5 billion contract to take over from John Holland.

"UGL is huge company that has always been known more as a train and rail builder than an operator and this move into the operations phase is a big one for us and it's not lost on the company," Mr Pistak said.

He said on average there are 1100 freight and 430 passenger movements a month over the country rail network, moving around 11 million tonnes of goods like grains, coal and minerals as well as passenger services.

"This year, as most people out here would know, is going to be bumper year for grains so there's going to be something like 7000 train movements across this area this year. That's fantastic."

The CRN is still being controlled from UGL Regional Linx's Newcastle base at Mayfield with the switch to be flicked in around a month and half.

"That will put the icing on the cake," Mr Pistak said.

"Our highly trained network of controllers will watch every moment, every movement across the network 24-7, they will be looking at things like speed, signal operations, distances between trains, time-tabling and other things that keep the network humming safely."

There will be 79 employees based at the Kite Street office with another 200 on the ground around the network. Part of UGLRL's tender was a pledge to have 80 per cent of its staff be based locally while 12 per cent are to be indigenous.

Acting premier Paul Toole said the company had exceeded both marks.

The company has also spent more than $8.5 million dollars locally on the establishment of its Orange base and equipment for its depots.

UGLRL will hit the ground running on Saturday night with the Western Line reopening after a sink hole closed it during the floods earlier this month.

Mr Farraway said a back log of freight will be the first through.

The explorer services will renew on Monday while the XPT service will resume on Tuesday.

In normal peak times, the CRN carries about 124 trains in a 24 hour period. That will rise to 300 this weekend as the backlog is cleared.

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