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From Pilbara to port – along the iron ore trail

August 29, 2014
Massive GE Transportation Evolution Series Locomotives with up to 200 cars snake their way from the remotest parts of Western Australia. They are the backbone of this massive export industry which sees more than 150 million tonnes of iron ore carried out of the country every year.
Every year 10,000 Rio Tinto iron ore rail cars make their journey out of the Pilbara hauled by these advanced GE locomotives. As they depart the mine site for the long journey to the port, the mechanical tail stretches more than 2.4 kilometres as it hauls roughly 26,000 tonnes of ore.

/><br /> <br /> They wind their way through gentle hills, carrying iron ore from remote mines like Rio Tinto’s Yandicoogina, 1350 kilometres from Perth, to towns and ports from where this precious red earth is shipped all over the world.<br /> <br /> Connecting this and 14 other remote mine sites operated by Rio Tinto in Western Australia is a rail network of more than 1500km of tracks which travel across the state’s massive expanse. Western Australia is vast, its land mass only slightly smaller than the entire Indian subcontinent, in fact  if it were a country it would be tenth largest in the world.<br /> <br /> At the mine, massive trucks, roughly the height of a two story building operate around the clock to fill the cars carrying as much as 240 tonnes of iron ore from the mine site to the processing plant.<br /> <br /> In coming years the locomotives currently used throughout the Pilbara will be replaced by the next generation in transportation technology.<br /> <br />