Round Australia Road Trip #11
The Pilbara region of Western Australia covers an area of more than 500 000 square kilometres. Its wealth of mineral riches includes vast deposits of iron ore, mined at Newman and Tom Price. The ore is transported to Port Hedland, where the deep natural harbour caters for the bulk tankers which export it to China and Japan.
The ore is transported from the mines to Port Hedland by road trains towing three trailers, up to 53 metres in total length
and by rail. The iron ore trains in Port Hedland are the longest trains in the world.
We timed our visit to the Redbank Bridge Lookout perfectly. A fully loaded train was approaching and the driver gave us a friendly wave and blew the horn as he passed under the bridge. I counted two engines at the front, followed by 137 cars, two more engines and another 135 cars. It took 15 minutes from beginning to end. This train might be the longest in the world but it wasn’t the fastest!
I can’t even imagine that many cars – wow. 🙂
You can just see the end of the train off in the distance.
Wow, that’s an amazing train! It must have been fun to watch it!
It was quite extraordinary.
How amazing. I find it hard to imagine the scale of the country, and how a huge train (rail and road) can just look quite normal!
Everything here is big Elaine. Maybe I should do a post about big things!
I think my mind would boggle at all the bigness!
I used to see really long freight trains going past my previous home – I would sit on the deck and amuse myself trying to keep count …….. I always lost count! The longest one I ever saw had disappeared around the corner to the port while the final carriages were still coming into view. I was impressed with that and your double engine lot is even more impressive!! Imagine if you were waiting at a rail crossing to go somewhere 🙂
I can’t guarantee the accuracy of my counting either. It was tricky. I commented to Mr ET that never again will I complain about waiting for a coal train to pass by at home. (but I probably will!)
Heavens I wouldn’t want THAT train trundling past my front door. We used to live in a flat close to a railway line and when freight trains went past the building would shake!
It’s amazing to me that in all your pictures the landscape looks so clean and unlittered. How does Australia do that? We are plagued with litter here.
We commented many times about the cleaniless of the towns and places we have visited. Maybe the Keep Australia Beautiful campaign is finally paying off.
So it was a campaign, nice!
It’s been going for decades. There is also a Tidy Towns competition every year.
That’s totally cool!
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