This will be in 'The Oz' print edition tomorrow:

Rio Tinto crashes another Pilbara train

Rio Tinto’s automatic train in the Pilbara has come off the rails. Picture: Rio Tinto

• By nick evans

  Resource Writer
• 8:23PM May 13, 2024

If a train crashes in the Pilbara and nobody sees it, did it really happen? That’s the question Rio may struggle with, after the mining giant piled up its iron ore train set for the third time in less than a year on Monday.

Getting rid of all of the drivers was supposed to make Rio’s rail operations safer, as well as more efficient. The trains, Rio boasts, reduce risk through “automated responses to speed restrictions and alarms”.

Perhaps next time Rio should set an alert for other trains they’ve managed to leave on their rail line, given the automated loco managed to slam into the back of another train left behind after (presumably) an earlier failure.

There’s also a curious disparity between what Rio is saying – that there were “no people within the vicinity of the incident and no injuries” – and the mining union, who say five maintenance workers had to abandon the broken down train in a hurry after being alerted to the coming impact. The workers were, Margin Call understands, in one of the lead locos of the broken down hauler – some 200 rail cars and about 2km from the site of impact. But still, force transfers through even that distance if the weight involved is great enough, and it only takes a couple of banged heads to ruin your safety figures.

Three locos and 22 rail cars left the line in the incident – and that might be even more of a problem for Rio, given a number of the engines rolled partially down the hill, and early reports seem to indicate diesel and engine oil might have spilt into a local creek.

Initial reports seem to indicate the offending train was supposed to have been shunted down a separate rail loop to head around its stranded cousin – but that doesn’t seem to have happened.

The Office of the National Rail Safety Regulator (ONRSR) and the Australian Transport Safety Bureau are investigating.

Aficionados of train wreck reports are advised not to hold their breath, though, given how long it takes the ATSB to investigate incidents that involve trains with actual drivers – a quick survey of the regulator’s website shows the ATSB is still to deliver a final report into the collision between Aurizon and Qube trains in Queensland in August 2022.