The Hindu Business Line : BHP Billiton helps take the load off Railways

BHP Billiton's former Vice-President (Rail), Mr Michael Darby, has asked the Indian Railways (IR) to use cutting edge technology to achieve best performance parameters such as higher axle loads and better asset utilisation.

As part of its gearing up process for the dedicated rail freight corridor (DFC) project, the IR, recently, had an interactive session on heavy haul operations to learn from the experience of BHP Billiton Iron Ore (BHPB), the company that moves among the heaviest axle load trains in the world in North West Australia.

R&D FOCUS

BHPB has since 1970 worked towards improving the performance and life of its railroad assets through research and development.

"We worked closely with the rail R&D unit of Monash University (BHPB's R&D unit was hived off to the University) to refine our processes," Mr Darby said.

The R&D programme is focussed on four main areas — rail/wheel interface, higher axle loads, train lengths, and life of components. Rail-wheel balance is the key for maintenance in all railway systems.

PERFORMANCE

There was a 5.6 times increase in life of wheels of BHPB's ore wagons — in 2005, they had to be changed after moving 1.9 million tonne km (mtkm), whereas in 1980 they had to be replaced after moving 0.34 mtkm. Mtkm, which represents the product of load carried and distance moved, is arrived at by multiplying load with distance.

Similarly, the life of rails rose to 1,800 million gross tonnes in 2005 as against 350 gross tonnes in 1980. BHPB now moves much longer trains — 312 wagons per train (2005) as against 208 wagons per train (1992), 180 wagons per train (1984) and 131 wagons per train (131).

AXLE LOAD: BHPB vs DFC

In terms of axle loads per wagon, BHPB migrated to 40 tonnes in 2005 from 28.5 tonnes in 1970 in a phased manner. "In today's competitive world, you cannot be profitable with 22-tonne axle loads because heavy haul railroads are already moving 40-tonne axle load," Mr Darby said, adding that the sleepers used in BHPB tracks were designed for 50-tonne axle loads. Compared to this, the IR's current track structure is designed for 20-22 tonne axle loads.

The IR, for its DFC project, aims at moving 25 tonnes axle load initially, stepping it up to 30-32.5 tonnes subsequently.

However, BHPB's iron ore network cannot be compared strictly to the DFC because the latter has certain limitations — it needs interoperability with several routes of the present IR network, which moves both freight and passenger traffic and has much lower axle loads of about 20-23 tonnes on most routes.

The IR is migrating to 25-tonne axle loads for some iron ore routes. The DFC would be served by huge lengths of feeder routes with relatively lower axle loads of 23 tonne and 25 tonne, pointed out Mr Rakesh Chopra, Additional Member (Civil Engineering), IR, during the interaction.

These lower axle load feeder routes, which would have the loading and unloading points for traffic on DFC, would also serve fairly high-speed passenger trains — of up to 150-160 km per hour.

Thus, even if the IR were to try moving higher axle load freight trains with much lower speeds on the feeder routes to avoid damage to tracks, the capacity for moving passenger trains would be impacted negatively. Mr J. P. Batra, Chairman, IR, discussed the possibility of adopting some of these lessons to move higher loads on the IR's iron ore routes and areas such as the KK line, Rourkela, Keonjhar, Bhilai.

EMPLOYEE PRODUCTIVITY

BHPB also tripled its employee productivity in the ten-year period from fiscal 1996 to fiscal 2005. "Each employee railed 0.353 million tonnes of freight in fiscal 2005 compared to 0.126 million tonnes in fiscal 1996," Mr Darby stated.

BHPB, which uses just one driver to run the entire train, uses specially-designed employee alertness programmes. "Drivers work on 12-hour stretches, and have specially-designed work schedules such as five days (working) followed by 6 days off.

There are fly-on-fly-off options as well, with 12 days working and followed by 15 days off," he said.

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