Today's Train of Thought- Oy! Oy! Oy! Aussie! Aussie! Aussie!

Wouldn't you know it? Today happens to be Australia Day. January 26th marks the arrival of the first fleet of ships from England arriving with 1500 colonists (more than half of them convicts) to what is now Sydney Harbor in 1788. Although the early years were quote rough, Australia has grown from a backwards isolated colony where the British would dump their convicts to a leading exporter of minerals and a popular destination for tourists throughout the world. And let's face it- some of the scenery in Australia is simply amazing. Even without tourism, the Aussie economy is on strong footing due to rising commodity prices and voracious international demand for iron ore, gold, copper, zinc, uranium, bauxite or nickel.

With the growth of Australia as a colony (and ultimately and independent nation), many states built up their own rail networks- each of them using different standards and varying between broad gauge, narrow gauge and standard gauge. This proved to be problematic with the expansion of Australia's population and it's transportation network. For instance, the famous Indian Pacific wasn't able to complete it's transcontinental route until completion of a standard gauge route through South Australia in 1970. With the national network as a whole lacking a uniform track gauge until the mid 1990s, this hindered both interstate passenger and railfreight traffic. Some railways have found a way around this problem by installing dual-gauge tracks. Others, like in Tasmania and Western Australia, remain isolated from the national railway network.

One series of such railroads includes the network of iron ore mining railroads in the rugged northwestern corner of Western Australia- also known as the Pilbarra region. This is railroading on a massive scale in some of the most rugged conditions on earth. Companies like Fortescue Minreals, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton haul iron ore from their mines in the Chichester, Hammersley and Pillbara mountain ranges to waiting ships at Port Hedland for export in trains that routinely exceed 200 cars (only the railroads run by Brazil's VALE mining company comes close).

With that in mind, the Aussie mining companies have selected American horsepower to handle this daunting task for the past several decades. Railpictures.net contributor Phil Melling caught BHP Billiton iron ore SD70ace in 'new earth' livery leading a GE AC6000CW north through the red red earth of the Chichester Range in Munjina, Western Australia as she brings a loaded ore train towards Port Hedland.

Just to give you an idea of the scope of the Western Australia iron ore roads, here is some footage of a 224 car BHP Billiton iron ore train.

I think if the GE and EMD products in service there are reliable enough to survive the scorching, rugged conditions of the Australian outback, they can handle pretty much anything else that comes their way.