Well you guys keep throwing hand grenades into the IPL thread and I can't ask questions about LCK over there, so......
The last coal train ran on the Leigh Creek line in April 2016. The line was transferred back to the SA Government shortly thereafter.
The rails are welded, but the rails are mostly on timber sleepers, about 400,000 of them for the 250 km line. My guess is that the SA Government would have done zero maintenance on the line since 2016, there being no reasonable prospect of further trains, and the termites out there are doing what termites do. I don't think the SA Govt will have the will to resuscitate the line for a private project, particularly one that emits lots of nasty greenhouse gases, which is why they closed the Pt Augusta power stations in the first place.
The construction and maintenance of the standard gauge railway to Leigh Creek was always driven by political ideology, originally for SA to be self sufficient in electricity for industry, instead of relying on neighbouring states. The line probably never went near to break- even from its opening in 1956.
To move two million tonnes of urea per year by road by B Double to Adelaide, would take, by my calculation, about 60,000 round trips per year, or about 1200 round trips per week. Cumulatively 1.2 million road kilometres per week. That's a lot of truck movements and a lot of diesel that all has to be factored into the cost to the consumer.
Anyway, for me IPL is primarily a mining services play through their explosives division and fertiliser is just a minor diversion. But when it started to rain in the Eastern states last February and then continued and a bumper grain season was on the cards it was obvious that farmers would be buying lots of fertiliser, which they are right now. LCK is a play for the future.
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