European Railroad Discussion > Sweden: Switching with V4 in Kiruna

Last spring I had a few moments to follow the switching of the powder cars next to Kiruna passenger station, where I stayed overnight at the hotel. The morning was for once bright and "warm", meaning temperatures above freezing.

The powder cars transport chalk to Kiruna to neutralize the toxic wastes of the ore and other minerals mining operation. As a result the air always seems to be quite fresh up there. This is a very responsible act from the mining company LKAB, since thing could be very much different too.

The Green Cargo takes care of hauling the normal freight trains to Kiruna station. There the switchers take over. Normally the station has a Td / T44 class switcher stationed but this day they only had a "tiny" Henschel built V4 for their use. It looks like this 1972-1973 built locomotive is kept in a very good condition, it actually looks quite new. The unit also has been painted recently and equipped with hands free remote equipment standard for Green Cargo operations in the north. The two or three man crews walk around wearing headsets and communicating through that while one or two can also carry portable joystick controlled radio terminals to drive the locomotives functions. In the second picture you can see this in use.

Oh, the cars are at the station for transloading to truck for a last mile travel to the mines. The mine has a lot of tracks to service it (it is the largest underground mine in Europe), but they still prefer to do this operation by truck.

Enjoy the pics!

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Some closeups of the V4. The locomotive seems to be very heavy for a three axle one, but according to the crews it is severely underpowered for this kind of semi heavy duty.

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One more before the switcher disappears somewhere else on the wast track areas of Kiruna.

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Can you explain a bit what the business in Kiruna is? I see terraces that may be a quarry or mine in the background.
Are these cars of "powder" perhaps ammonium nitrate for blasting or are they products of the area?

Thanks for posting that remarkable locomotive too. I don't know which is more "highly visible", the crew PPE or that green paint.

Kiruna is the site of a large Iron Ore mine, which typically do not produce much acid. More likely the Chalk "Limestone" is to Flux the pellets or sinter produced at the mine. Steel mills like to receive pre-fluxed pellets now rather than adding fluxstone as part of the blast furnace charge separately.

Thank you for questions.

Kiruna has the largest underground mine in Europe and produces huge quantities of best grade iron ore (?)magnetite(?). The production is somewhat limited to what the heaviest trains in Europe can carry to several processing plants and two harbors. On the transportation you might wish to take a look on "Running with IORE" article on this forum or here: http://www.4rail.net/visions_sweden_runningiore1.php

The chalk powder at this occasion was solely for neutralizing the mines gases and other waste, though like SOO points out there are other uses for the stuff too. I was somewhat surprised to see that this stuff needed to be trucked the last mile while there should be rail connections all the way up to the mine. Maybe it was too busy and at least it was at the time blocked by the outbound ore trains waiting for the green signal for the Malmbana running. Malmbana is single track so it can only accommodate about one ore train per hour each direction with current traffic patterns. There are lots of other sorts of trains there too that too need to run.

1) A view to the main mining area.

2) Area in Kiruna, where housing will need to be moved before the earth collapses under them.

If you are looking for the Kiruna map at Google Maps or other source, be warned: they are all hopelessly obsolete and are missing about _50%_ of the current infrastructure! So you can not get any idea from there what the area currently looks like.

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McKey Wrote:
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> Thank you for questions.
>
> Kiruna has the largest underground mine in Europe
> and produces huge quantities of best grade iron
> ore (?)magnetite(?).

Yes, John, it is magnetite, a very rich form of iron ore. The mineral is black and in crystalline form shiny. Hematite may also be present, this being a semi precious stone used for jewellery in many African countries.

As its name suggests, magnetite is magnetic and causes compasses to give erroneous readings.

I remember reading about Kiruna in high school. Even then it was Europe's largest iron ore mine.

Thank you Focalplane!

And even at your (and my) school time the issue always was about transporting the ore. And locomotives were painted red or green, some even with wooden sides, which disappeared from Sweden only in 1980s.

Here is one interesting picture, would you have any idea what mineral this might be (if any)? Sorry, this is the best picture from the service road below the Malmbana on the Norwegian mountains.

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Iron Ore is rich by the amount of Iron Oxide to the amount of impurities such as silica, phosphorus, sulphur, and manganese found in the raw ore. Between the two common forms of Iron Oxide, Magnetite Fe3 O4, while Hematite is Fe2 O3. Magnetite is easier to concentrate to a product that is 65 - 67% Iron Oxide that Steel Producers prefer. Magnetic separation is easier than using Humphrey spirals. With the development of super-conducting magnets Hematite can also be separated magnetically. Typically modern Iron Ore is shipped as an agglomerated product for ease of handling, commonly a pellet or sintered nodule. Even if you started with Magnetite, when you "fire" or heat the concentrate to produce the pellet or nodule you convert the Iron Oxide to Hematite.

A good explanation on the subject. Here there will be more raw iron ore powder trains next year of the Northland resources, but the production will start really slowly and pick up with years. Interestingly the Northland mines are right next to Finnish border and some even in Finnish area, but since the gauge on rails is "nonstandard", shipping is made to normal gauge countries.

I always find it funny that large amounts of the pelletized ore is transloaded to ships in Luleå, Sweden and travels to huge Tornio, Finland steel mills for further processing to several steel variants. There is just 20 kilometers / 12 miles of missing standard gauge track in between! Using ships and two transloadings to travel 10 kilometers on water ways, which are covered with 3 meters /10 feet of ice in the winter seems like stupidity to me, definitely a place to make some investments to lower costs and improve profitability anyway. When huge ice breakers are involved, the costs are always astronomical. Sweden and Finland have several of these in a common pool in the northern Baltic sea available for ships that get stuck in the thick ice.

Here is a 1/8 of the ice breaker fleet of the two countries dorming in Luleå in May. Most were built in Helsinki, Finland and have power of 10 ES44 locomotives combined. The ship to be helped is either towed with a cable or put fixed to the back into the V shaped area. Sometimes just braking the ice and pushing it sideways helps. Still it is not so much about raw force than ingenious technologies put together to break the thick ice. Accurate weather info helps, as well as special designing and coating of the hull. One of the best inventions is blowing air from the hull to move the ice in front of the breaker / convoy.

The newest models (Russia is buying these from Helsinki yards) can go sideways when breaking the ice. This means they can be smaller and still help supertankers out of the ice. The trick is using Azipods (360 degree circulating propellers) instead of traditional cardan axle ones. You find the Azipods in (actually under the bow and stern) all the new cruise ships too to help maneuverability.


It is easy to imagine that replacing ice breaker helped ships with just a short stretch of track would be wise and forward looking. Especially since the EU rules for 12015 dictate that the more pure form of heavy oil to be used on ships cost twice as much as the typical oil used now.

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It looks like there is orange graffiti under the ermewa name in the first picture. It seems the savages have escaped North America! All is lost!

Yes, sometimes everything is literally lost and taking pine soup and hard brush in my Corel Photo Paint can take time to clean things up. Pine soup and brush is said to be a good method of cleaning graffiti here.

Look at this sympathetic old switcher in Helsinborg, southern Sweden no graffiti after it was washed!

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Nice stuff! Thanks for sharing, and have a Merry Christmas.

You're welcome. Merry Christmas to you too!