in the dark, page-25

Hi Westcott (and others)

You're welcome - I have watched this co for a couple of years simply due to the length of railway required and also because I believe we are watching a new iron ore provence being unwrapped for the first time (albeit slowly!) As I said before, unfortunately I had to sell my holdings last year but have still watched and taken a fair interest in this company since then.

I was a bit surprised to see the numbers from the Promet study quoting 16 locos and 1040 wagons! The dynamic forces in that config must be quite something. BHP tried a few years back (successfully) to set the world record for the longest train at around 7.5km length - I understand the train broke couplings several times before finally making it to Port Hedland. The Promet train would be in the order of 10.7km long which given a flat grade and smooth running may be possible but any small crests would be a bit of a challenge!

To give you some perspective on the challenging requirements for this rail, The consist configuration I gave you before should be capable of achieving climb against the loadeds (heading to port) of around 0.4% maximum! That is around 1/10 the crossfall on an average road - so getting the alignment correct can save you metres of unnecessary embankment and cuttings! The interesting thing is that should SDL wish to up their tonnage to be transported (to say 100Mtpa) then they would simply (from a rail perspective!) need to add more passing opportunities (ie - more sidings) to the network to potentially 20km spacings! With the extra traffic from other companies - this should be quite achievable.

Keep up the good work and I hope that this co will be the "next big thing" Good Luck

Regards...Maxi
DYOR!