[miningmx.com] – TRANSNET Freight Rail (TFR), a division of Transnet, said it would shut down its Richards Bay coal line for about 12 days this month in an effort to catch up on a maintenance backlog.
The annual, scheduled closure, which will be from May 14 to 25th, was also to allow TFR to replace old and obsolete infrastructure and to accelerate capital expansions and upgrades underway in terms of Transnet’s Market Demand Strategy (MDS).
“The shutdown will also serve as a boost to the infrastructure construction programme for the expansion to 81 million tonnes a year which has recently commenced,” TFR said in a statement.
There are sections of the coal line that cannot be upgraded without stopping train services such as at Overvaal which is a single portion of the line, TFR said.
In the 2012/13 financial year TFR railed 69.2 million tons of export coal on the line, a record in the history of the line, it said.
