Eyre Peninsula Rail Upgrade (TRAX)
The Project
The Eyre Peninsula rail project is located at Port Lincoln in South Australia. The network consists of approximately 650km of track serving the grain ports.
The region’s rail network and interfaces with associated bulk-handling infrastructure were deteriorating.
This effect has resulted in derailments and compromised the rail’s ability to meet market requirements and potentially encouraged more freight onto regional roads, especially at the main export port of Port Lincoln.
The project will ensure that more than half of the grain transport task on Eyre Peninsula continues to be carried on rail. This will minimise the impact of grain transport on greenhouse gas emission.
Scope of Work
The project undertook upgrades to the rail network across the Eyre Peninsula. Works covered re-railing, re-sleepering, extensive flashbutt welding and resurfacing, including:
- Upgrades to grain handling facilities/rail interface at key port and up-country silo sites
- Replacing 62,428 sleepers comprising of 55,268 new steel, 42 wood and 6925 reclaimed steel sleepers.
- 12,978 welds
- Ballasting and minor works
Challenges and Innovations
The project team encountered an array of challenges with a combination of wet weather, fire bans, trains running and time trains going through the worksite.
Winter conditions created challenges for access to worksites in wet weather as access tracks along the rail corridor deteriorated. Remediation works were undertaken of the worst effected areas to allow emergency vehicles to access if needed.
Summer conditions of strong wind and fire bans restricted certain activities such as onsite joint welding as strong winds and fire bans. This required a tight work schedule and initiative for the crew to make up any loss time.
Flexible methodology ensured the crew could tackle uncalculated obstacles. The project team used initiative when unexpected obstacles were encounted.
Extra sleepers were required in some rail sections due to existing sleepers being beyond repair and not surviving disturbance of track works.
Joint elimination was originally scoped using methodology which would have resulted in the use of more thermit welds, however once on site the methodology was changed it resulted in a saving in welding consumables of approx $250K.
There were a number of alignment issues with the tamper however these were addressed after extensive fault finding by plant personnel. Also at times track access was limited due to trains running.
Employment
MVM Rail employed local people from Port Lincoln and surrounding areas. Many crew with farming backgrounds received their very first rail experiences.
Initially new employees attended an intensive three week rail school to provide them with knowledge and skills to work within the rail industry. Two extra one week rail schools were run at no cost to the project due successful applications to government agencies for funding.
Over the period of project the majority of employees successfully completed the nationally recognised Transport Distribution Training Certificate III Rail (Civil) Infrastructure in line with Australian Qualifications Framework 3. As well as achieving Certificate 3, some employees were trained and assessed as competent in additional industry skills such as alumo-thermic welding and operation of heavy track equipment.
Due to varying commencement dates a small number of employees gained Transport Distribution Training Certificate II Rail (Civil) Infrastructure.
Environment
From project inception fire was identified as a major risk and as such a Fire Management Plan was developed and implemented for the project.
Throughout the project internal vegetation audits were conducted by delivery managers along with a comprehensive identification tagging process of significant plant species within the rail corridor worksites. One worksite noted a prolific new growth of sensitive native vegetation.