Mount Newman railway

Mount Newman railway
CM40-8Ms at Port Hedland in August 2003
Overview
Type	Heavy rail
Status	Operational
Locale	Pilbara, Western Australia
Termini	Newman Finucane Island
Operation
Opened	22 January 1969
Operator(s)	BHP Billiton
Depot(s)	Port Hedland
Technical
Line length	426 km (264.70 mi)
Track gauge	1,435 mm (4 ft 8 1⁄2 in)
Route map

The Mount Newman railway, owned and operated by BHP Billiton, is a private rail network in the Pilbara region of Western Australia built to carry iron ore. It is one of two railway lines the group operates in the Pilbara, the other being the Goldsworthy railway.

In addition to the BHP Billiton network, there are three more independent iron ore rail lines in the Pilbara: the Rio Tinto operated Hamersley & Robe River railway, the Fortescue railway and the Roy Hill Railway.

The Mount Newman railway runs for 426 kilometres, from Newman to Port Hedland and is one of Australia’s longest private railways. The line, along with its spur lines to Mount Whaleback, Orebodies 18, 23 and 25, Jimblebar, Yandi and Area C, services the iron ore mines at Newman. It has the longest and heaviest trains in the world. The railway line was officially opened on 22 January 1969 by David Brand.

Voice and data communications utilise a digitally trunked P25 VHF radio system and SDH transmission via either fiber or microwave linked repeater sites. The vast majority of remote repeater sites are solar powered with generator backup. The system is maintained by BHP Billiton Rail Communication Technicians based out of Port Hedland's Nelson Point and Newman. All track side infrastructure such as wayside monitoring equipment, signals, switch motors, telemetry data and monitoring devices are solar powered and are monitored and controlled out of the Integrated Remote Operations Centre (IROC)in Perth.

The rail journey from Newman to Port Hedland typically takes about eight hours. The 268 car trains are 2.89 kilometres long with each car carrying up to 138 tonnes.