Today's Train of Thought- Happy Australia Day! Jan 25th, 2015

Today's Train of Thought takes us (where else?) Down Under to Australia.

While railways elsewhere in Australia were something of an amalgamation of different gauges and engineering techniques [that apparently weren't brought to a single national standard until the 1980s- NANESB!] the iron-ore railroads of Western Australia's Pilbarra region operate some of the biggest trains in the world in some of the most inhospitable terrain on earth.

One of the first iron-ore lines in northwestern Australia was the Hammersley Iron line between the port of Dampier and the then newly-opened Tom Price mine more than 300km inland back in 1966. Japanese manufacturers sought massive quantities of iron-ore from the Pilbarra region and in no time, 230+ car trains of iron ore began winding their way from mines in the unforgiving interior to waiting vessels in Dampier. To the east, a competing iron-ore railway called the Mount Newman Railway was under construction and by August 1969 saw the first iron-ore trains on its rails.

Much more recently, Fortescue Metals Group sought rail service their Cloud Break mine and Port Hedland some 250 miles away. Before spending more than A$2 billion on a mew line, Fortescue sought access to Cloud Break by way of obtaining trackage rights on BHP Billiton's Mt Newman line. However, that faced legal challenges and Fortescue ended up building their own iron-ore line to Port Hedland, with work completed by 2008.

Meanwhile, like railroads in the US, the other western Australia iron-ore rail lines were subject to mergers and consolidations [although unlike the boom and bust cycles in the USA, the Aussie lines have seen steady growth since opening up- NANESB!] and the original Hammersely iron line came under the control of multinational Rio Tino.

Here, railpictures.net contributor Sean McGarraghy caught Rio Tinto ES44AC #8185 on the point of a northbound ore train as it makes its way through Millstream-Chichester National Park on its way to Dampier on May 14th, 2014. These massive trains routinely exceed 230 cars and often require additional power in the middle of the train.

While on the subject of Australia, the Miss Universe pageant was on Sunday. While Miss Australia, Tegan Martin, made the final cut of 10, the grand prize was awarded to Miss Colombia.

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.