Pretoria - Railway operator Transnet Freight Rail (TFR) will from today onwards shut its coal export line so as to catch up on maintenance work, said the state utility.
The coal line will be shut for a 12-day period starting on Tuesday (14 May) to 25 May 2013.
The shutdown will not only allow the company to catch up on a maintenance backlog but will allow the utility to replace old, obsolete and problematic infrastructure. It will also allow the company to accelerate the major capital expansion projects in line with the expected volume growth as is required for the company’s Market Demand Strategy (MDS).
“The shutdown programme is also necessitated by the fact that on the Coal line there are sections where infrastructure work cannot be carried out without stopping the entire train service. For an example, at Overvaal (single line portion of the line) where critical maintenance and refurbishment work need to be done as well as work to be performed in the Ermelo yard,” said TFR spokesperson Sandile Simelane on Monday.
The MDS is Transnet’s R300 billion infrastructure plan that is set to create 588 000 new jobs in the South African economy. Through the MDS the company, which is the custodian of rail, ports and pipelines, will spend R300 billion on capital projects over a seven-year period.
In the 2012/13 financial year TFR railed 69.2 million tons of export coal on the line. – SAnews.gov.za
