Rail Freight

QR National is on target to meet delivery timeframes for the Wiggins Island Rail Project (WIRP) in Central Queensland with early works commencing across project site locations, the freight operator said. WIRP involves the staged development of new rail lines and upgrading of existing lines to service the new Wiggins Island Coal Export Terminal (WICET) [...]

BFK (BAM/Ferrovial/Kier JV) has appointed GB Railfreight to transport excavated material from Crossrail's Royal Oak Portal to Northfleet. Crossrail tunnelling will commence at Royal Oak next month. Excavated material generated from the tunnelling operations for the western tunnels (Royal Oak to...

Asciano announced recently that its Pacific National coal haulage business has entered into a 15 year performance based take or pay contract with Springsure Creek Coal Pty Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Bandanna Energy. The contract is for the annual movement of up to 4 million tonnes from its proposed Springsure Creek mine in [...]

The reopening of the Dimboola to Rainbow line with the first grain train meant that up to 100,000 extra tonnes of Victorian grain would move annually by rail, Parliamentary Secretary for Transport Edward O’Donohue has said. Mr O’Donohue said that it was exciting to watch the first Pacific National grain train depart. “Under the previous [...]

Rio Tinto will run the world’s first automated long-distance heavy-haul rail network, with a $518 million investment in driverless trains. The first driverless train will be launched in 2014, with the AutoHaulTM automated train programme scheduled for completion a year later. AutoHaulTM is being pioneered as part of the automation component of Rio Tinto’s Mine [...]

QR National has reported a 32 per cent fall in net profit. Net profit fell to $189 million from the six months to December, which has been attributed to the fact that QR National didn’t receive a large tax credit unlike the year before from its privatisation. The country’s largest rail operator warned that coal [...]

The Association of American Railroads (AAR) has reported an increase in weekly rail traffic for the week ending February 4, 2012, with U.S. railroads originating 284,546 carloads, up 6.2 percent compared with the same week last year. Intermodal volume for the week totaled 232,590 trailers and containers, up 16.8 percent compared with the same week [...]

DB Schenker Rail UK has agreed terms with two major property developers for the operation of proposed new intermodal terminals in the south-east of England. Both terminals are located close to the M25. The interchange at Radlett in Hertfordshire is...

Union Pacific Railroad is to pay $1.5m in a settlement against violations of the Clean Water Act and Oil Pollution Act. The settlement with the Environmental Protection Agency resolves a Clean Water Act enforcement action against Union Pacific that involves continuing operations at 20 rail yards in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, as well as spills [...]

Logico, a division of Freightliner Ltd, recently operated a special train of new multimodal rail containers for Stobart Rail. Logico hauled the special service from Freightliner’s Garston Terminal to Freightliner’s South Wales International Terminal in Cardiff. The special consignment of multimodal...