This way and that on Transnet's freight lines

[John Ashworth]

This way and that on Transnet's freight lines

All things are not equal on Transnet's tracks - as Paul Ash discovers while hopping freights

BUSINESS TIMES
31 MARCH, 2012 22:14
PAUL ASH

6.30am, Voorbaai rail yard

DAN Pienaar, driver of 1174, the weekday freight from Mossel Bay to Worcester, is champing at the bit. It's going to be hot and, with a pair of ailing 46-year-old diesels up front, anything can happen.

Pienaar and train assistant Leandré Eksteen will meet train 1173, the daily eastbound freight, at Karringmelk, a typical Cape rail siding. There they will swap trains with the eastbound's crew and bring it on to Mossel Bay.

A little after 7am, our train is hustling upgrade from Mossel Bay, its wagons trailing along obediently behind.

Today's load is just 447 tons - a handful of loaded petrol tankers and some empty gondolas. Other times, the load might be timber wagons or chemical traffic, or loaded wheat hoppers.

Along with fruit containers from Ashton and Robertson, there is enough traffic, says Transnet, to guarantee one train each way on weekdays, roughly 500000 tons a year. If truckers paid the real cost of their use of the country's road infrastructure, the line would be instantly competitive.

Transnet regards the Worcester-Voorbaai link as a core route. It is the shortest east-west link between Cape Town and the Eastern Cape. But it is a mountain railway, picking its way along the foot of the Langeberg, and train speeds average 50-60km/h.

On the long straight after the Mossgas refinery, we race trucks on the parallel road. Everybody waves at the train, even truckers.

"That's the problem," says Pienaar. "It takes the train 12 hours to get to Worcester, the trucks go straight to Cape Town in six."

The line is an example of how single-wagon load freight has been lost from rail to road since deregulation of the road-freight industry in 1985. Now Transnet Freight Rail is trying to persuade local shippers to come back to rail. It will be a tough fight - many of the private sidings that once served online customers have long been closed.

Today track gangs are out in force, replacing old rail and swapping steel sleepers for concrete. Better rail means higher track speed, vital if the line is to compete with trucks.

The locomotives, however, are on their last legs. The two diesels on our train were built in 1966 and are plagued by chronic mechanical troubles.

It is 33ºC when we roll into Karringmelk and, as we continue west, it only gets hotter.

The new crew discover I am to visit the Ore Line, one of Transnet's crown jewels and the beneficiary of a sizeable chunk of the company's R38.4-billion capital investment programme. Naturally, there is rivalry. "They have air- conditioning and computers in those locomotives," says driver August Koenze. "I don't think an ore line driver could come here and do what we do." He laughs. "I am the computer here."

11am, Loop 3, Sishen-Saldanha ore line

A loaded ore train stands in the loop, its last wagon invisible 4km back in the haze.

Up in the air-conditioned cab of the brand-new 15E leading locomotive, Wikkie Kruger, a 42-year veteran railwayman, sits at a console, looking at the three computer screens that tell him what his train is doing.

A green signal beckons. Kruger radios the control room in Saldanha, nudges the throttle forward and the train, imperceptibly, begins to move.

Apart from a muffled whine from the locomotive and the hum of the air- conditioning, there is almost no sound. It is difficult to comprehend that there is 40000 tons of train - 342 wagons, each carrying 100 tons of red ore, and eight locomotives - coupled behind.

Kruger soon has the train running at a steady 55km/h, the line's track speed. You don't fool around with 40000 tons of train, says Norman van Wyk, one of the line's operations managers.

"Energy-wise, you don't want to stop this train until you reach the port," he says.

The ore trains use distributed power - four locomotives up front, four engines placed in pairs at intervals throughout the train and one pushing from the rear. Kruger controls all the locomotives - a mixture of electric and diesel - from the lead engine. The system is a work of art - just getting electric and diesel locomotives to "talk" to one another was a complex feat.

The track is heavy continuous-welded rail - ironically, it is imported - set in deep stone ballast. It is like riding on silk and a world away from the bone-jarring ride of the Voorbaai line.

The dangers on the Voorbaai route are prosaic, such as car drivers jumping level crossings and pedestrians on the track. Here, with heavy trains and extremes of heat and cold, keeping the track in good shape is a challenge.

"The biggest danger we have is broken rails," says Van Wyk. Following a massive derailment last year, an inspection trolley follows every loaded train to check the track.

There is much at stake. The line may have only a handful of customers but they are mining companies with clout. More locomotives are on order as the company aims to increase the schedule to 39 loaded trains per week.

By early afternoon we are approaching Saldanha. Kruger slowly brings the train to a halt in the yard at Salcor. From here the hoppers are shunted to the wagon tipplers and the red ore flows down conveyor belts, into ships or onto the stockpile.

Since boarding their train at 3.30am at Loop 10, the halfway point, it has taken Kruger and train assistant Thando Saule 11 hours to bring their 40000-ton train safely to Saldanha. Looking towards the sea, I remark that he has one of the best office views in the world.

"Ja," he says, "but I don't always get time to enjoy it."

[Steve Appleton]

See the story at:
http://blogs.timeslive.co.za/wanderer/2 ... ht-trains/

[John Ashworth]

That link was already at the top of the original post... but anyway it boosts our post count!