FV in NSW/ACT

["Melanie J. Dennis" <meld.asg@netspeed.com.au>]

Aus loco discussion mailing list

Further to Ross McConchie's report:

There is room to load five wagons before the rake has to be moved.  The train is on a reasonable grade so when each group of wagons is loaded, the crew can simply release the brakes and let gravity do most, if not all the work.  The original estimate for loading each wagon was fifteen minutes - for a 23 wagon train, that works out to 5-3/4 hours.  However, it takes the loader six trips to fill a wagon and the average time to do one trip was around 3-1/4 minutes.  When you add in other delays, the original estimates were a tad astray.  The exporter doesn't want to hire another loader to speed the process as that's a direct cost to him and I don't think FV will be happy about the overtime as their crew were well over their normal hours.  Loading of the last two wagons had started when I left around 18:15.

Control wanted the train to run through to Goulburn to take its pace in the queue for the rush down the mountain.  However, given the long hours on duty of the FV crew, MTR safeworking staff (also on long hours) felt that the FV crew would run the locos around at Queanbeyan, then set the train back onto the Cooma line and knock off.  

On this point, to give the FV crew relief time, it is possible that other operators may bid to crew the train during the day: either the local FreightCorp crew or MTR (who would require training for 26L brakes if they couldn't use their own loco).

On a lighter note, depending which map you look at, the Cooma line runs either directly west or east of the NSW/ACT border.  With the log storage on the ACT side, assuming the line is on the NSW side, this represents a new concept in 'cross-border loading'.....

Melanie Dennis
Australian Steam Group
meld.asg@netspeed.com.au


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