Fortescue railway
As Fortescue railway a railway line in the Australian Pilbara province is called. It is owned by The Pilbara Infrastructure Pty Ltd, a subsidiary of Fortescue Metals Group (FMG ).
History
After the FMG vain for years tried hard their mines Cloudbreak and Christmas Creek on the existing lines of the mining companies BHP Billiton and to link Rio Tinto to the harbor at Port Hedland, began in November 2006 with the construction of its own railway line. She was treated with 40 tons axle load performance designed than the adjacent railway lines, which bring it to 35 or 37.5 tons axle load. To set the distance a new world Rektord to list in this category. This seemed to have been used with a weight of 68 kg / m and the profile PG4. It was the first construction of a railway line in the region for more than 40 years.
Its construction took 18 months and cost the company A $ 2.5 billion (approx. 1.9 billion Euros ). The only major interruption of construction was caused by a cyclone, the two workers lost their lives in March 2007. There were built eight prestressed concrete bridges and 360 culverts. Seven of the bridges were built with an arc length of 25 m, only the transfer of BHP Billiton rail is designed as a beam bridge. On 5 April 2008 she was finally opened.
Mid-December 2010 the 40 km- long extension to the Christmas Creek mine was opened.
Route description
The route leads from the Christmas Creek Mine on the Cloudbreak mine to Herb Elliott Port in Port Hedland. It has eight 250 m and 3,000 m long three passing loops. The connection to the port is configured as a turning loop. The connection to the mine is equipped with a 3,000 m long passing loop. The turnouts with movable point frogs are equipped for 70 km / h. The route Billiton over 100 km along the Mount Newman line from BHP and crosses this height freely.
The track was built with concrete sleepers at a distance of 675 mm and the tracks were welded using the flash butt welding. Only in exceptional cases, the aluminum - thermite welding process was used.
Operation
FMG operates on its current (as of January 2013) a total of 43 locomotives ( including GE Dash 9- 44CW and EMD SD90 ) and about 3000 iron ore wagons, 30 tankers and 47 hopper cars. The driving duration for the total distance of approximately five hours. Average run four trains per day. A round trip lasts less than 20 hours
These trains are up to 2.7 km long and have 240 wagons which are pairwise kurzgekuppelt. These are connected via rotatable couplings to the other carriage. This is needed for unloading at the port. Here are ton freight cars to 160 ° tilted to empty it two of the loaded 150. The system creates this 80 cars per hour to empty. Average 33,000 tonnes of iron ore are transported per train. Thanks electropneumatic brake the trains can be loaded of 75 km / h in 760 m brought to a standstill, unloaded out of 79 km / h in 486 m.
Every year, 55 million tonnes were initially handled. This was increased to June 2012 to 72 million tonnes per year. The route is controlled by FMG from Perth in train control. The Company expressly allows that other railway companies use the route.
The track has currently (as of October 2012) as the only operating plant Rowley Yard south of Port Hedland. The second depot Kanyirri yard is under construction.
Extension
The route will be significantly expanded in 2013. Overall, the line will be expanded to double track at 120 km. Similarly, the railway line will be expanded to a 130- km-long branch to the Solomon Hub. For this purpose, four new bridges should be expanded and two new turning loops are built in Port Hedland. This expands the capacity of the route to 155 million tons per year. Are to be handled per day per day then eleven trains. For this purpose, FMG invested U.S. $ 9 billion (approx. about € 7 million).
There are further plans to expand its route network to a hub Westast of Solomon to New Pilbara port at Anketell, as well as to mine Western Hub. In order to be placed per year, the performance on the web until June 2017 to 355 million tonnes.