Thread: And you reckon you have a large fuel bill!

Drivesafe,where do you find this stuff?,it interest the hell out of me. Pat

Drivesafe - do you know if any railways are running AC locos over here. I know that BHP has the AC 6000's and the newer SD70ACe's in the Pilbara, but haven't heard of anyone else running them in Aus.

It was amazing when they first got the 6000's - two of these could easily pull a fully loaded 330 car iron ore train from a standing start up the hill out of Yandi, where three Dash 8's often had to back up through the loadout to get a running start at the hill.

Originally Posted by BMKal

Drivesafe - do you know if any railways are running AC locos over here. I know that BHP has the AC 6000's and the newer SD70ACe's in the Pilbara, but haven't heard of anyone else running them in Aus.

They are the only AC units I know of, not saying there aren’t others but I haven’t heard of any.

Originally Posted by PAT303

Drivesafe,where do you find this stuff?,it interest the hell out of me. Pat

After 17 years on the job, I’ve got quite a few mates still driving and we tend to keep one another up to date on stuff ups and other goings on.

I had this BNSF video sent to me a year or so back and had a link to it on my web site but I see it’s now on YouTube, might interest you Pat.

It's a great view from the cab of an AC loco


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XkWuib8pIY"]YouTube - BNSF head on crash in Kismet california[/ame]

Originally Posted by PAT303

Drivesafe,where do you find this stuff?,it interest the hell out of me. Pat

Pat - check out Pilbara Railways, photos of current iron ore operations in NW Western Australia

"Toad" is a mate of mine. We used to work together at Yandi for a few years.

Here’s a couple of pictures from up the NW WA.

This has to be my favourite pics of any toyota

Train!


TRAIN!


WHAT TRAIN?







OH WHAT A FEELING

That's not funny.

I was driving a Toyota Troopy hi-rail one night taking a mining crew out from the camp to Yandi II. Because I was lazy and didn't want to get off and turn round at the points up in the cutting, I used to reverse the first km or so up through the cutting and through the points, then call up control in Hedland to switch the points over so that I could drive forward through them an out to the Yandi II loop about 10 km or so away. At that end, I'd either turn round or simply run around the loop before the return trip.

Anyway, as I was reversing up through the cutting at a fair rate of knots, pitch black & raining, and just looking in the rear vision mirrors occasionally but seeing nothing but blackness, somebody in the back decided to turn on the overhead light, which is immediately above the centre of the barn doors in the back of a troopy. Well - the last thing that you want to see when you are doing what I was doing at the time is a light behind you.

Once I realized what the light really was - the air was blue ..................

US railways give amazing service compared with ours. We could order a Fiat-Allis 41B dozer (76 tons) and it would go on rail in Chicago, no dismantling other than blade and push beams off and under the belly pan, and have it at wharf in Long Beach in seven days. No Australian railway can carry one without removing tracks and cab, and then you may have to wait weeks for a suitable wagon to be found and delivered.