International Railroad Discussion > FMG SD70ACe

FMG (Fortescue Metals Group) SD70ACe locomotives 704 and 706 head south from Port Hedland (Western Australia) this afternoon, across the spinifex plain, with 250 empty ore cars.

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Excellent! Thanks for posting.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/30/17 05:30 by tferk.

The 250 car train: what kind of speed does the train make? When cars are loaded are more engines added to train, any grades on the line?

tomstp Wrote:
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> The 250 car train: what kind of speed does the
> train make? When cars are loaded are more engines
> added to train, any grades on the line?

I'm not sure about the speed, but I think they run at 50 miles per hour, empty and loaded. FMG run with just two locos on their 250 car trains. Leaving their loading points they get two locos pushing on the rear for about the first 60 miles. The grades facing loaded trains are no steeper than about 0.5%. Loaded trains weigh more than 44,000 tons.

44K tons and two engines, yikes. That's like 2200 tons per operative dynamic brake. Start early on the air!

Posted from Android

Hookdragkick Wrote:
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> 44K tons and two engines, yikes. That's like 2200
> tons per operative dynamic brake. Start early on
> the air!
>
> Posted from Android

I work on an adjacent (and competing) rail system, which operates under similar circumstances. We run 232 car trains with two locos on the front and a single remote unit 116 cars back. Once we have cleared the Chichester Range we have about three hours of running under full dynamic brake down to the port. There are a few short sections where the dynamic brake is backed off to B4, but most of it is B8, supplemented by 10% ECP brake in a few spots. In one or two locations we might go up to 20% brake, but it's only applied for a few minutes. Our trains have a gross of just under 43,000 tons.

This months "Motive Power" is reporting that FMG 910-917 are now stored

These are the SD90MAC-H with the original engine

Does anyone know if this group will be repowered with 16-710?

For sure Vale mining of Brazil run the heaviest daily ore train in the world nowadays. The 340 broad gauge, 150 metric gross tons ore cars give the train a load of more than 57,000 tons. And Vale is testing to upgrade the train to 440 cars soon. The new S11D project mines was developed to work with section of 110 cars each.
In the narrow gauge system Vale common trains are 168 or 320 cars, with gross tons of 100 tons each.

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Pedro Rezende
Vespasiano MG,
https://youtube.com/c/minasgeraisrailways1