end of line for iron ore train drivers

WITH AC/DC's new album, Black Ice, turned up loud, Steve Langsford does push-ups on the floor of his airconditioned cabin. He is pulling 234 cars of iron ore towards the Pilbara coast from Rio Tinto's mine at Tom Price, 1550km north of Perth.

Langsford is one of 314 train drivers who deliver iron ore along a 1300km rail network to ports at Dampier and Cape Lambert from 11 inland mines across the Pilbara. He earns about $210,000 a year and works for two weeks straight before spending the third at his rural property near Yallingup, in the state's southwest, which he bought five years ago so he could surf whenever he was home.

But the end of the line may be approaching; a collapse in commodity prices, a slowdown in the Chinese economy and a planned switch to driverless, fully automated trains could have a dramatic effect on Langsford and his ilk.

The outlook was further muddied yesterday with Treasurer Wayne Swan clearing the way for billionaire Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest's Fortescue Metals Group to gain access to BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto's private iron ore railways in the Pilbara.

And then there are the 39 train drivers who have led three strikes in the past three weeks over the company's refusal to negotiate a union agreement with them.

They plan a fourth stoppage, for four hours, on Friday.

The company effectively shut out unions from its Pilbara operations in 1993 after a tumultuous chapter that it claims cost jobs - disputes that have since entered industrial folklore and included a push by Robe River workers for more ice-cream flavours in the canteen.

A lot has changed since the 1970s and 1980s when train drivers' lunches were packed for them and they were known as koalas because management treated them like a protected species.

Rio's present-day drivers are a diverse bunch, aged between 20 and 71, and comprise career locomotive operators from the government rail system, freight drivers from outside mining and graduates of the company's local train-driving program, including two former police officers, three Aborigines and five women.

The job can take three years to master, but after that, drivers such as Langsford say their time is their own for long stretches of every journey.

For each 286km journey from the mine at Tom Price to Dampier port, Langsford plugs his iPod into the cabin's sound system and works out, dances or sits back and takes in the view of the Hamersley Ranges and Chichester Ranges.

"The best thing about this job is you are completely alone," he says.

His colleague on the coast in Karratha, Kerry Stubbs, is a Salvation Army volunteer who uses his time at the controls to pray. He brings his own rosary beads and stands a crucifix on the console. Another driver reads books, and usually gets through 10 on a two-week rotation.

Each fully loaded train, headed by three diesel locomotives built in Pennsylvania by General Electric, is 2.4km long and carries 29,500 tonnes of iron ore valued at about $2 million.

Though the air-conditioned cabin is comfortable, any glitch requires the driver to stop, climb down and check every car. In temperatures that regularly top 40C, the 4.8km walk along the train requires a backpack full of bottled water.

The money and the conditions are great, Langsford says, although he acknowledges that sacrifice is required to live on a fly-in, fly-out basis, as he has done at Tom Price for the past five years.

His 11-year-old daughter, Sarah, misses him terribly. "She tells me, 'Dad, you've been away half my life'," he says.

The unionised train drivers slugging it out with Rio Tinto want to end the company's policy of "direct engagement" with its employers.

That is, they want the right to be represented by their union and speak about how powerless they feel as individuals when they have a complaint or when they are in trouble.

The log of claims from their union, the mining division of the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union, reveals their fears about becoming obsolete - it includes a requirement for a driver to accompany every driverless train.

Langsford is aware of the company's guarantee that no driver will be out of work as a result of automation, and Rio Tinto's projected increased output from about 200 million tonnes to more than 220million tonnes next year certainly indicates an escalation in activity that would sustain more jobs, not less.

But Langsford is unsure if he wants to become a rail technician, or a member of a crew used in the event of an automated train breaking down. He seems resigned to the fact his job as he knows it will no longer exist within five years.

"It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when," he says.