The presentation Pilbara Power 1995 & 2001 covered operations of heavy iron ore trains in the Pilbara at those dates, and included the railway companies of BHP Iron Ore, Hamersley Iron, Robe River and the merged (Hamersley & Robe) Pilbara Rail. This presentation, Pilbara Review 2019 Pt 1 Port Hedland, looks at the 2019 operators at Port Hedland, these being BHP Billiton (BHP), Fortescue Metal Group (FMG) and the recently formed Roy Hill (RH).
BHP is by far the largest operator and can trace its iron ore mining history back to two companies, Goldworth which made its first iron ore rail delivery in 1965 and Mt Newman which followed on a much bigger scale in 1969. Today BHP has some 178 locomotives and over 10,000 ore wagons and ships over 200 million tonnes of iron ore per annum. This presentation also provides early 2000s comparisons with 2019 in BHP’s development of rolling stock, facilities and operations.
By comparison FMG is considerably smaller, starting rail operations in 2008 and having a mixture of General Electric and EMD type locomotives totalling some 46 active units, a number of which were purchased second hand and rebuilt. It has some 4,600 ore wagons and ships about 95 million tonnes of iron ore per year.
Even smaller is Roy Hill which first shipped iron ore by rail in late 2015. It does have the latest in new equipment, 26 of the General Electric Evolution type ES44ACi locomotives and some 1400 iron ore wagons. It ships some 60 million tonnes of iron ore per year.
Approximate run time: 204 minutes.