Waking up in Geelong

This is the tale of the 40 wagon long train that heads along the Frankston line, shipping steel to the BlueScope Steel plant at Hastings.

Twice a day a train departs the Melbourne Freight Terminal at South Dynon.

The train skirts the edge of Southern Cross Station.

Then rolls through the river end of Flinders Street Station.

Then traverses the tracks at Richmond Junction.

Heads towards Caulfield.

Over the rollercoaster grades at Ormond, McKinnon and Bentleigh.

Eventually making it south to Frankston.

Then heads along the single track Stony Point line.

Turning off the main line at Long Island Junction.

To arrive at the BlueScope Steel plant beside Westernport Bay in Hastings.

Photo via Southern Peninsula News

Some history

The steel mill at Hastings was opened by Lysaght in 1972. Lysaght’s was acquired by BHP in 1979, demerged as BHP Steel in 2002, and then renamed BlueScope Steel in 2003.

The Victorian Government encouraged the development of the plant with the passing of the Western Port (Steel Works) Act 1970 – specific provisions relating to rail were:

The Premier on behalf of the State covenants that the State will ensure that there shall be provided –

• to the boundary of the Plant Site a suitable rail link by which rail facilities constructed by the Company at its cost within its boundaries may be connected to the Victorian Railways network;
• adequate rail motive power and rolling stock and suitable rail services to ensure the satisfactory movement of materials products and equipment to and from the Plant;
• rail transportation services for the conveyance of employees of the Company or its site contractors to and from the Plant

under such conditions as are agreed between the Victorian Railways Commissioners and the Company.

The 6.2 km long branch line from the Stony Point line opened in 1969, with 87,730 tons of traffic being moved over the new connection in 1972/1973. The efficiency of these trains was improved following the introduction of dedicated block trains, with 50,000 tonnes of coiled steel transported from Hastings during 1981/82.

Weston Langford photo #115670

The Hastings Port industrial area land use plan detailed the operation of the mill during the 1990s:

Steel slab is brought in by rail and ship, primarily from Port Kembla, for processing into a range of finished-steel products for the local, national and international markets. Products are sent by truck to the local market, by rail to interstate markets in South Australia and Western Australia, and by ship to international markets. Presently BHP sends 300 000 tonnes of steel a year by rail from Whyalla and Port Kembla to Westernport, but has an agreement which would permit this tonnage to be increased to 800,000 tonnes.

BHP is constantly reviewing and upgrading its operations to increase efficiency and become more export-orientated. A new cold-strip galvanised steel production line has recently been commissioned at a cost of some $138 million. Presently BHP steelworks employs 1500 persons and produces approximately 1.2 million tonnes of steel a year from a plant that has a capacity to produce 2.6 million tonnes. The new galvanised steel line increased production capacity by some 800 000 tonnes without requiring any large increase in staff numbers.

Today the steel trains are operated by Pacific National following the sale of the National Rail Corporation in 2002, and form the sole freight link to the mill following the 2012 retirement of the ‘Iron Monarch’ that moved slab steel by sea between Port Kembla and Hastings.

Facts and figures

Today each steel train is made up of 40 wagons and is hauled by a pair two 2,830 kW (3,800 hp) G class diesel locomotives, with approximately 600,000 tonnes of steel product per annum moved by rail to Hastings.

Made train is made up of a mix of wagons with pairs of ‘jumbo’ coils of steel.

And ‘butterbox’ containers of coil steel.

The average wagon has a tare mass of around 20 tonnes (based on a RKLX class wagon) and with a loaded gross mass of 74 to 79 tonnes – or 30 tonnes for a single container!

For the proposes of comparison, the permitted gross vehicle mass of a standard six-axle semi-trailer in Victoria is 42.5 tonnes – or a single container per truck. With 40 containers and 40 steel coils per train, and two trains per day each way, a total of 320 truck movements are required to move the same load.

Rail gauge troubles

Australia’s rail gauge muddle has complicated the operation of trains to Hastings – steel loaded on broad gauge trains from Hastings needs to be transferred onto standard gauge trains to head interstate.

Initially this occurred at Albury and Adelaide, until the gauge conversion of the Melbourne–Adelaide rail corridor by the National Rail Corporation in 1995. This saw the opening of the Melbourne Steel Terminal in West Melbourne, where the steel would be transhipped between local broad gauge trains and interstate standard gauge trains.

This terminal closed in 2015 to make room for the ‘E’ Gate development, with transhipping of steel now occurring at the nearby Melbourne Freight Terminal.

The provision of standard gauge access to Hastings has been examined multiple times, via the Frankston or Cranbourne lines, but no progress has been made towards such a connection.

And elsewhere in Australia

Steel trains to Hastings form a small part of the work that Pacific National does for BlueScope Steel and Arrium across Australia. In 2003 the deal was valued at $400 million over four years, and was followed in 2006 by a $1 billion seven year contract, which was extended for another seven years from 2015.

A total of 2.3 million tonnes of steel moved by rail in 2013:

• 1.38 Million is Port Kembla and Westernport outbound
• 0.96 Million is transported on behalf of Onesteel

The reason for these massive numbers – each piece of steels moves an average of 3.2 times through manufacturing plants, rail terminals, distribution centres and customer sites.

To cater for this traffic, a specialised fleet of wagons is used:

• Steel Coil – 2.5-28t (Horizontal and Vertical), 285 ‘butter box’ wagons
• Steel Plate In & Out of Gauge – 67 flat wagons, 55 tilt wagons
• Structural Beams – Shared fleet, typical 5-15 wagon per week
• Scrap – 46 scrap box’s, 23 container wagons
• Raw Materials – 3 locomotive Sets, 100 wagons

Which results in varied trains.

Footnote

Think this look familiar? It’s an expanded version of my 2018 post Rail replacement trucks for the Frankston line. 😉

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