A “reform team” is now determining which positions are most appropriate to make redundant “without impacting day-to-day operations”.

It is the first tranche in 3000 to 4000 redundancies the minister is hoping to create in the 15,000-employee organisation. A Booz and Company report for the government found that, compared with other rail systems around the world, RailCorp was mass- ively overstaffed.

The government believes RailCorp has four times as many senior bureaucrats for the size of its workforce than the former RTA, and 20 times more than the Department of Education.

“There have been more than 1000 formal expressions of interest received for redundancies,” a Transport for NSW spokesman said.

“The RailCorp reform team is determining which positions are the most appropriate to be made redundant.

“The government is pleased with progress to date and is committed to driving real improvements for customers and eliminating back office inefficiencies. RailCorp costs $10 million a day to run, with costs rising three times as fast as the number of passenger journeys. That is unsustainable.

“Each of these 1000 are from the sector that we mentioned will be targeted – back office middle management.”

Ms Berejiklian announced the redundancies in May and said at the time the move was about “fixing the trains”.

The minister predicted there would be a “scare campaign” from unions warning of further job cuts but said she was determined to carry out her agenda. Cuts to mainstream RailCorp staff are expected to begin when the government negotiates an enterprise bargaining agreement it has with the unions which the former Labor government put in place until 2014.

Under that agreement, the minister is not permitted to summarily sack staff.

Earlier this year Ms Berejiklian said: “We are a global city, we need a 21st century rail organisation. Unfortunately a lot of practices have been around 50 to 60 years or longer. We want to turn RailCorp into a modern organisation. One example is there are restrictions as to what train staff can do versus what platform staff can do.

“What we keep getting told is guards aren’t allowed to get on the platform.”

In the June budget the government foreshadowed 15,000 public service job cuts over four years through natural attrition or redundancies on top of the RailCorp cuts.